Microsoft HoloLens Developer Contest. Ep1
Winning this contest is a good start for Music Everywhere. I want to share how we prepared for the competition, and review problems we encountered from both the design and team perspectives. The contest had two phases; this episode will cover the first phase:
Submit an idea to solve a problem with the HoloLens.
Last May, 2017, Music Everywhere had no office yet. We spent our days designing in coffee shops and our nights roaming the CMU campus. We continued to think: how can we solve the problem of music learning using the HoloLens? Though early music students encounter many problems at the start of their journey, we truly believed that using Augmented Reality and the HoloLens would help people learn music in a more intuitive and interesting way: AR and the HoloLens brought the future within reach.
Understand the requirements, and plan out the strategies.
The requirements of the first phase was tailored-made for us. During the CMU, ETC semester, we already built a workable prototype, and demo’ed at the GDC (Game Developer Conference) in San Fransisco, NIME (New Interfaces for Musical Expression) in Copenhagen. We also created the proof of concept video on Youtube. We have all the materials they want in our hands. The problem is how to improve the prototype via the competition?
What is our new goal?
The answer to this question went beyond the contest. It spoke to the central mission of our company. How could our product development for the contest help inform our company’s roadmap?
By collecting playtest results from over 80 testers across our demos from CMU, GDC and NIME, we decided to add more interactive piano lessons. This meant animations to create a brand-new experience: AR Jamming. It would allow users to select different virtual musicians, and to learn a variety of musical genres. At the end of the experience, users could test their skills by participating in a music tour concert in the end of the learning session. Based on the performance result of the concert, users could unlock new musicians and lessons. Sounds great right? Well this idea also gave us several challenges.
An interesting idea with a boring pitch?
The function of the Music Everywhere prototype from our time at CMU was basic. Users select music genre: Blues, Rock, Jazz and Classical to learn piano improvisation in the different styles. The audio-synced character animations provided the foundation of the interactive environment. AR Jamming seems playful and interesting, but compared with the existing prototype, it was a huge addition. Could we deliver this new scope in the next four months? How do we craft a marketing message for the new experience — what kind of video does it need? How do we craft a strong user story for AR Jamming?
At this point in our development process, June 2017, we were fortunate enough to find work space out of CMU’s Incubator, Project Olympus. We were no longer nomads; we found a home for our new business. As time marched onward, we still struggled with the AR Jamming mode. We debated into the night, most nights, but fell short of consensus. The pitch was just not compelling enough. One night, I said to my partners,
Maybe our prototype has already solved the problem, and it’s good enough to only focus on how to take more advantages on HoloLens.
Good enough? Sounds not right…
“Good enough” sounds not quite right, and lazy. But I used that phrase as my ruler to measure the scope of the task. Without a bottom line, the ideation phase of our work would continue and eventually overflow. It was becoming clear that our efforts would be impossible to accomplish unless we changed our approach.
I call this phenomenon “Illegal Building in Design”.
We had a good idea, but aggressively kept adding more to it. This was out of scope.
We had already settled on the most critical AR design component: blurring the line between the virtual and the real.
This meant an enhanced experience for the users as they interacted with the virtual musician. Instead of thinking through our progress to date, we had gotten carried away with the vast potential of AR-at-large. We had taken a solid foundation, and kept building on top of it. If we kept building, the structure was bound to collapse eventually.
Two days before the deadline, we ditched the AR Jamming idea. Instead, we stuck to our core idea and wrote the pitch in the most comfortable way:
Dear Microsoft,
We’re interested in creating a more dynamic and intuitive way to learn music using the HoloLens.
Sincerely,
Music Everywhere
Just kidding, but our new pitch, focused and clear, gave us the opportunity to advance in the contest, and improve where our MVP prototype had left off: improving piano setting process, compatibility challenges and more (which I’ll cover in the next post).
We tore down our “Illegal Buildings” and strengthened the core of our main idea. By leveraging existing resources, and being honest enough with ourselves to admit we needed to pivot, we pulled together to start our journey for the HoloLens Contest.
