Co-Designing Virtual Reality Musical Instruments and Spatial Layouts for Collaborative Music-Making

Alberto Boem, Stavros Skouras, Gad Baruch Hinkis, Mélodie Mousset, and Luca Turchet

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract

Collaborative music-making in Virtual Reality (VR) presents unique challenges that intertwine instrument design, spatial arrangement, and social dynamics. This paper presents findings from a participatory co-design study investigating rhythmic instruments and spatial layouts for collaborative VR music, conducted entirely within PatchWorld with nine participants from its user community. Through iterative prototyping across two workshops, participants in our study converged on design principles favoring VR-native interactions over approximations of physical instrument. The co-design process yielded two contributions: the Universal Rhythm Box, a collaborative rhythmic instrument whose design parameters were wholly derived from structured participant feedback; and a spatial environment arranged for mixed-skill ensembles incorporating tiered access zones and semicircular arrangements. Our findings suggest that spatial layout and instrument design are inseparable in collaborative VR. We also identify attribution ambiguity as a key challenge in networked ensembles, and provide empirically-grounded guidelines prioritizing visual feedback as a primary expressive dimension for group playing in VR.

Citation

Alberto Boem, Stavros Skouras, Gad Baruch Hinkis, Mélodie Mousset, and Luca Turchet. 2026. Co-Designing Virtual Reality Musical Instruments and Spatial Layouts for Collaborative Music-Making. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20784292 [PDF]

BibTeX Entry

@inproceedings{nime2026_97,
 abstract = {Collaborative music-making in Virtual Reality (VR) presents unique challenges that intertwine instrument design, spatial arrangement, and social dynamics. This paper presents findings from a participatory co-design study investigating rhythmic instruments and spatial layouts for collaborative VR music, conducted entirely within PatchWorld with nine participants from its user community. Through iterative prototyping across two workshops, participants in our study converged on design principles favoring VR-native interactions over approximations of physical instrument. The co-design process yielded two contributions: the Universal Rhythm Box, a collaborative rhythmic instrument whose design parameters were wholly derived from structured participant feedback; and a spatial environment arranged for mixed-skill ensembles incorporating tiered access zones and semicircular arrangements. Our findings suggest that spatial layout and instrument design are inseparable in collaborative VR. We also identify attribution ambiguity as a key challenge in networked ensembles, and provide empirically-grounded guidelines prioritizing visual feedback as a primary expressive dimension for group playing in VR.},
 address = {London, United Kingdom},
 articleno = {97},
 author = {Alberto Boem and Stavros Skouras and Gad Baruch Hinkis and Mélodie Mousset and Luca Turchet},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.20784292},
 editor = {Benedict Gaster and João Tragtenberg and Anna Xambó and Tom Mitchell},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {June},
 note = {},
 numpages = {12},
 pages = {820--831},
 title = {Co-Designing Virtual Reality Musical Instruments and Spatial Layouts for Collaborative Music-Making},
 track = {paper},
 url = {http://nime.org/proceedings/2026/nime2026_97.pdf},
 year = {2026}
}