Corey Ford

PhD researcher in Interaction Design, specialising in Human-AI interaction within creative practices such as music composition. Current interests are in designing for reflection, engagement, creativity, and education.

My most recent work has been centred around block-based creativity support tools for music composition — specifically, using these to explore collaborations between people and generative AI systems.

Areas: Music Technology, Interaction Design, Computer-Supported Education, Music Composition, Generative Music, Digital and Computational Creativity, Explainable AI, Machine Learning, NIME, C++

selected publications

C&C

Identifying Engagement in Children’s Interaction Whilst Composing Digital Music at Home

Ford, Corey, and Bryan-Kinns, Nick

In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Creativity and Cognition Jun 2022

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Identifying points of engagement from a person’s interaction with computers could be used to assess their experience and to adapt user interfaces in real-time. However, it is difficult to identify points of engagement unobtrusively; HCI studies typically use retrospective protocols or rely on cumbersome sensors for real-time analysis. We present a case study on how children compose digital music at home in which we remotely identify points of engagement from patterns of interaction with a musical interface. A mixed-methods approach is contributed in which video recordings of children’s interactions whilst composing are labelled for engagement and linked to i) interaction logs from the interface to identify indicators of engagement in interaction, and ii) interview data gathered using a remote video-cued recall technique to understand the experiential qualities of engaging interactions directly from users. We conclude by speculating on how the suggested indicators of engagement inform the design of adaptive music systems.
NIME

Creativity in Children’s Digital Music Composition

Ford, Corey, Bryan-Kinns, Nick, and Nash, Chris

In Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression Jun 2021

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Composing is a neglected area of music education. To increase participation, many technologies provide open-ended interfaces to motivate child autodidactic use, drawing influence from Papert’s LOGO philosophy to support children’s learning through play. This paper presents a case study examining which interactions with Codetta, a LOGO-inspired, block-based music platform, supports children’s creativity in music composition. Interaction logs were collected from 20 children and correlated against socially-validated creativity scores. To conclude, we recommend that the transition between low-level edits and high-level processes should be carefully scaffolded.