A virtual world prototype for interacting with a music collection

Jukka Holm

Arto Lehtiniemi

pp. 326-335

in: A. Ant Ozok, Panayiotis Zaphiris (eds), Online communities and social computing, Berlin, Springer, 2011

Abstract

This paper studies the idea of using virtual worlds as an interface to access music collections or music recommendation services. In the evaluated 3D prototype, the user moves around a city and interacts with various characters, the looks of which reflect the musical style that they are recommending. In a user study with 41 participants, it was learned that the concept did not fit well to most users' music consumption habits, and using the prototype for only browsing music was considered to be too tedious and boring. The application should contain more activity and interactive elements, and there should be a clear goal to strive for. To develop the concept further, a better solution would be to modify an existing game or virtual world application by adding music recommendation capabilities.