| Abstract | This paper presents SongExplorer, a system for the exploration of large music collections on tabletop interfaces.
SongExplorer addresses the problem of finding new interesting songs on large music databases, from an interaction
design perspective. Using high level descriptors of musical songs, SongExplorer creates a coherent 2D map based
on similarity, in which neighboring songs tend to be more similar. All songs are represented as throbbing circles
that highlight their more relevant high-level properties, and the resulting music map is browseable and zoomable
by the users who can use their fingers as well as specially designed tangible pucks, for helping them to find
interesting music, independently of their previous knowledge of the collection. SongExplorer also offers basic
player capabilities, allowing the users to organize the songs they have just discovered into playlists which can
be manipulated as well as played and displayed.
In this paper, the system hardware, software and interaction design are explained, and the usability tests
carried are presented. Finally, conclusions and future work are discussed.
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