How It Started

The MaKey MaKey Portable Chorus had a much more straightforward start than the MaKey MaKey Chord Board. The finished prototype of the MMPC resembles the initial design much more than the original design of the MMCB.

MMPC 0.1 - Concept Art

The initial idea for the MaKey MaKey Portable Chorus was designed to be another kit built into the same kit as the MaKey Makey Chord Board 2.1. The design you see above is another faceplate layout that we designed to work with the same configuration as the MMCB. As you can see in the diagram, the program was initially designed with "people" drawn on the board with thumbtacks as their heads. Each thumbtack was intended to work as a trigger to activate and deactivate the given part. There were also blanket triggers for all men's parts and all women's parts. There was a "Start/Stop" button included and a "Comments" button for students to record on.

MMPC 1.0 - Exterior

As the team worked through the design process, the MMPC became simplified. The recording function button was taken off of the design with the idea that if a student wanted to record themselves, they could simply overwrite the instrument track and then be able to listen back to how they sound with the other parts. The "Comments" button was also taken out. The thought was that if a student had comments about the track that they recorded, they should be able to rationalize their thought process while listening back to the track with the teacher. This promotes the idea of actively listening to one's self and testing a student's ability to apply their knowledge to fix their own mistakes. With this streamlined design, the MMPC 1.0 was completed.