Designing Group Music Improvisation Systems: A Decade of Design Research in Education

Bart Hengeveld, Mathias Funk

In this article we discuss Designing Group Music Improvisation Systems (DGMIS), a design education activity that investigates the contemporary challenge design is facing when we go beyond single-user single-artefact interactions. DGMIS examines how to design for systems of interdependent artefacts and human actors, from the perspective of improvised music. We have explored this challenge in design research and education for over a decade in different Industrial Design education contexts, at various geographic locations, in several formats. In this article we describe our experiences and discuss our general observations, corrective measures, and lessons we learned for (teaching) the design of novel, interactive, systemic products.