On the 17th January, I had my second meeting with Dove House Hospice with another one of their Music Therapists called Patrick. Patrick did Computer Science and Music at University so he was a bit more up to date with the technology side of things. He was really interested in the project and gave some helpful tips and advice on the user journey of the application. We discussed ways that may make a user use the application after the user is introduced to music therapy and potentially progresses onto face-to-face sessions. This is where we thought of the mood tracker through the use of colours. We did think about musical notes being a tracker with sharp and flat notes being the indicators, however, we thought this may be a bit too technical and may put people off if they do not understand music score. Patrick said that the most challenging part of Music Therapy was getting people on board with the idea that it could be just as beneficial, if not more than, another type of therapy. This is where I thought of the idea of using rMusic as the journey from the first interaction with the patient to the actual face to face session. Perhaps using a leaflet with a QR code that people, like Patrick, could give out to patients and their families to introduce them to Music Therapy but in their own time. Especially as Hospices can be quite overwhelming by themselves, without the bombarding of information. rMusic could introduce them in a subtle way and encourage them to take the next steps into therapy.
Month: March 2019
First Meeting with Dove House Hospice
On the 9th January I went to Dove House Hospice, the external partner to my project, to go visit one of their Music Therapist’s called Briony Ming. During this meeting we discussed the demographics of Dove House Hospice’s clients. Briony mentioned that it is mostly younger people from 10-18 years old and older people who are either in the hospice with a lifelong illness or older people who have just lost a loved one. This is where we discussed possible ways to attract the middle age group and perhaps creating an introductory application that the music therapists can recommend to people to try out and to introduce them to music therapy.
Briony and I discussed various ways people use Music Therapy and how the sessions differ depending on the person. One of the ways that intrigued me was the option of the client’s story to be recorded and made into a DVD with a slideshow of their images. After the meeting I tried to think how this process could be mirrored into the application and this is where I thought of the idea of having the feature ‘Stories’ where users can listen to other people’s stories that relate to music and hopefully become inspired or help them think about their own stories as a result of this. I think a key part of Music Therapy is learning about your own identity through the use of music and I thought this could be a unique way for people to share their thoughts and experiences.
Gif Logo Design
I decided to create a gif of the logo to be used on the loading page to emphasize the ‘r’ being in the shape of a tree, which is a universal symbol of growth, family and life.
I created the gif on Adobe Animate and it was the first time I had used this software. It was hard to get the hang of it at first and after watching many YouTube videos, this was the final result.
I would like to create more gifs to use on my app but this is something I will focus on after I am happy with the content of the app as that is my priority.
Audience Research Questionnaire Results
The first survey created for this project was created to collect general views on Music Therapy from a diverse group of people of all ages, gender and association with music. As this survey was only shared on my social media pages, this will have limited the geographic location, age and background of the respondents however, this still gave a general idea of people knowledge of music therapy.
My survey generated 100 responses with the majority of respondents (72%) aged 17-34. The other 28% were divided across the rest of the age groups varying from the categories ’13 and under’ with 3% and ’65+’ with 2%.
My results showed that 48% of my respondents would consider to sing or play a musical instrument at least every day. However, 22% of my respondents would say that they do not sing or play a musical instrument ever.
47% of the respondents have heard of Music Therapy however they do not know what it is. Only 15% knew what Music Therapy is and know what it entails. 26% haven’t heard of it but are interested. The rest of the respondents (12%) haven’t heard of it and are not interested.
After a brief explanation of what Music Therapy is, 70% agreed that they are either very likely or likely to consider Music Therapy if they were feeling low. 15% of them said they would be neither likely nor unlikely and only 15% said they would be unlikely or very unlikely to consider it.
39% of the respondents said they have had some form of therapy in the past, whereas 61% had not. This could be an indication that I was trying to persuade the respondents to not only consider Music Therapy but to consider therapy as a whole.
35% of my respondents said they would prefer therapy through the use of an application on a mobile device which is why I have chosen to include a webpage that people can interact with as well.
