Studying how digital luthiers choose their tools

Renney, Nathan; Renney, Harri; Mitchell, Thomas J; Gaster, Benedict R

Abstract

Digital lutherie is a sub-domain of digital craft focused on creating digital musical instruments: high-performance devices for musical expression. It represents a nuanced and challenging area of human-computer interaction that is well established and mature, offering the opportunity to observe designers' work on highly demanding human-computer interfaces. This paper explores how and why digital luthiers choose their tools and how these tools relate to the challenges they face. Findings from 27 standardised open-ended interviews with prominent digital luthiers from commercial, research, independent and artistic backgrounds are analysed through reflexive thematic analysis. Our discussion explores their perspectives , finding that a process of pragmatic rationalisation and environmental influences play a significant role in tool selection. We also present how challenges faced by digital luthiers relate to social creativity and meta-design. These findings build upon the existing literature that examines the designer-tool relationship.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: CHI '22: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
• Start Date: Apr 29, 2022
• Acceptance Date: Apr 29, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Apr 28, 2022
• Publication Date: 2022-04
• Deposit Date: May 10, 2022
• Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Pages: 1-18
• ISBN: 9781450391573
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3517656
• Keywords: CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → HCI theory, con- cepts and models; Interactive systems and tools; • Applied computing → Sound and music computing; KEYWORDS Digital Musical Instruments, Digital Luthier, Design Tools, Design Practice, Qual
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/9491386
• Publisher URL: https://dl-acm-org.ezproxy.uwe.ac.uk/doi/10.1145/3491102.3517656