I was checking out Mashable today and saw this post on playing the piano on YouTube. A Swedish production company called KOKOKAKA had put it together and I thought I would try it out. I'm always interested in seeing new or unique applications of technology, so I thought I'd try it out. If you haven't already tried it out in the video above, it takes advantage of the YouTube feature that allows users to click back to a certain portion of the video. The team then recorded themselves playing all of the notes and linked them for a user to play in any sequence they like. Plan on tearing through Beethoven's 9th symphony on it? Good luck. As an interactive piece, I appreciate all the work that went into it. However, it's not that fun to play with.
Playing the piano on things other than a piano is kind of played out, and the fun theory piano stairs have this beat in terms of uniqueness. On a computer, there are a number of free online pianos that work a lot better. Also, the nature of YouTube technology doesn't really lend itself to actually making music in this particular execution. Having to wait for the video to finish loading while the video itself is playing is a major turn-off for most people who expect instant satisfaction when watching anything on YouTube. On top of that, the slight delay between your mouse click and the sound playing is just a bit too much to make anything sound good, and the sound of the video cutting in every time you hit a note is annoying.
As a lesson learned on the process of creating content for interactive, I think its great. It demonstrates two factors everyone should consider when they create interactive content.
1) What are the possibilities and limitations of the technology?
The designers behind this video totally saw an opportunity to use YouTube to trigger notes on a piano. To me, I feel like they completely disregarded the limitations YouTube brings to the equation. The way they put that video together and the way the cue feature works doesn't make it work the way a user would want a piano to work. Which leads directly to my next point.
2) Is it any good to interact with?
It's possible for anyone to put ice cream on a steak, but would you want to eat it? My guess is no. Like anything in the world that we interact with, it has to be something we want to do in order for us to get any value from it. In concept, it sounds kind of cool to create something with a technology that it wasn't originally intended to do. However, that's a moot point if the final product isn't any good to use. The piano stairs are extremely difficult to make music with, but that's not really the point because they're still fun to use. Maybe you had the time of your life using the YouTube piano, but I did not like the experience it provided.
As a proof of concept, maybe it will lead into something greater. On its own, it's a unique idea that doesn't respect the limits of the technology enough to be something people would want to use. For anyone making anything that others have to interact with, I hope you you keep these two points in mind.
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