TuneVault
A critical design that locks your phone away while an album plays, so you can finally listen from start to finish.
Listening turned into background noise.
Streaming put every song in the world one tap away. Somewhere along the way, listening turned into background noise.
For my graduation I wanted to find out why people who listen to vinyl describe the experience as richer and more conscious, and whether that feeling could be brought into the way most of us actually listen: through a phone and a streaming service.
The topic is personal. I collect records myself, and vinyl keeps growing, especially among Gen Z: a Key Production survey found that 59% of 18 to 24 year olds listen to physical formats. Something is clearly missing from the streaming experience.
Which aspects of the vinyl listening experience create a conscious, richer way of experiencing music, and how can they be translated into the streaming experience?
How can I translate the conscious, tactile listening experience of vinyl into today's digital music listening?
Three challenges, one prototype.
- 1Understand what makes vinyl specialThrough desk research, interviews with fellow collectors and experiments on myself.
- 2Translate it, do not copy itNobody is going to swap Spotify for a turntable, so the answer has to work inside the streaming habit.
- 3Make it something you can feelNot just a concept on paper, but a physical prototype people can touch and test.
What does streaming do to the way we listen?
- Music became backgroundResearch on "soundtracking" shows we listen to more music, but while doing something else. Listening quality drops. As one person put it: music is wallpaper.
- Endless choice, handed to an algorithmA catalogue of 100+ million songs causes choice stress, and the algorithm quietly makes the choice for you. Limiting yourself makes what you pick more meaningful.
- No ownership, no effortA record is a physical thing you chose, bought and have to put on. That small effort raises the value of the music. Streaming has none of that friction.
I do feel more attached and connected to that LP because of the investment. And it is always there, wifi or no wifi.
Interview with a fellow vinyl collector (translated from Dutch)
- Ritual
- Tangible
- A full album, start to finish
- Collecting
- Extra context and artwork
- Looks good in the room
- Fewer distractions
- Sound quality
- The investment
- A moment of rest
- Buy a record
- Add it to the collection
- Take it out of the sleeve
- Place the needle
- Listen, after all that effort
Experiment 1
Could I add physical buttons to Spotify? I connected an ESP8266 to the Spotify API with a small display, a potentiometer and buttons. Only play and pause worked.
Insight: deep Spotify integration was out of my reach, so I needed a simpler way to make the idea tangible.
Experiment 2
Lying down with headphones, one album, no phone. At first focus drifted, a bit like meditation. Then I began hearing things in songs I knew by heart. A second tester had the same experience and nearly fell asleep.
Insight: removing distractions makes you notice more. But too relaxed is not the goal either.
On songs I knew, I started noticing instruments I had never noticed before. I also started paying attention to lyrics that had passed me by.
Tester, listening experiment
From everything to one thing.
A conscious music player
My first idea tried to carry over every vinyl aspect: music cards you slide into a machine, a big album cover screen and a second screen with extra context. In pitches, people loved the sliding ritual, but doubted the cards ("why buy a card for an album I can stream for free?"). The overall verdict: it wants too much and loses focus.
One clear goal
So I simplified. The core of my project is making listening more conscious, and the biggest enemy of that is the phone itself. V2 is a media player that only starts when your phone is inside the box and the hatch is slid shut. You choose your album first, then you commit. An NFC tag triggers playback.
A product that tries to do everything often ends up doing none of them well. Focus on doing one thing exceptionally.
The first full design.
V2 became TacTune, a listening device that belongs in your living room. I set three design criteria and built it as a real object.
- It looks goodVinyl collectors display their records, so the player had to be a showpiece too.
- No phone while listeningNo skip button either. Give the artist's track a chance.
- A ritual before the musicLike placing a needle, you have to do something first.
Style
I compared three moodboards (60s minimalist, colourful 70s, warm wooden) and chose warm wooden hi-fi: it fits most people's furniture. The base is a 70s amplifier faceplate with a handmade MDF housing. Paint never gave the right wood, so I wrapped it in wood-effect foil.
Testers said it gave a similar feeling to vinyl, invited them to listen attentively and took the phone out of the picture.
- see what is playing
- see the album cover
- get the phone in and out more easily
- the NFC tag only starts one album
- Spotify data cannot be shown
- the hatch is hinged instead of the sliding mechanism I sketched
- no play or pause either
A sharper question.
At my final presentation I was asked: is this a speculative design, a real product or a critical design? I had not thought about it enough. Seen honestly, TacTune did not offer enough to be a product people would pay around 500 euros for.
The heart of my project is how attached we are to our phones, and how that changes the way we listen. A critical design can make that statement more powerfully than a product that has to tick every commercial box. So I repositioned.
Layers
A tester told me they noticed things they had never heard before. So I imagined four knobs to isolate or mute vocals, bass, drums and the rest. But would playing with layers make you listen more attentively, or distract you more? It was not the statement I wanted.
Locking
One function only: locking. You put your phone in, the hatch closes and your phone is locked away until the piece is over. The moment the lock engages is the point. Your phone is suddenly out of reach, and you have to wait.
How TuneVault works.
A preset experience, built for an exhibition rather than a living room. That is why it is calmer than TacTune: no volume knob, no pause, no skip.
Two lights, one instruction
Green means ready. Red means locked and playing. Green again when the hatch unlocks.
Headphones, not speakers
Closing you off from your surroundings makes attentive listening easier.
A hatch that decides
Once it is closed, the phone stays inside until the music has finished.
Making you feel how attached you are to your phone.
The goal
Bring focus back to listening, and invite people to reflect on how they listen and how much their phone shapes it. TuneVault should start a conversation about digital distraction in the age of streaming.
Why put your phone in?
You do not have to. But TuneVault confronts you with the choice: can you, or do you even want to, listen to music without your phone?
Where it lives
Not a home product, but a critical design for a museum or a festival like Dutch Design Week, where visitors are invited to interact, think and discuss.
Four things I took away.
TuneVault is no replacement for vinyl. We can listen more, more often and everywhere. But does the quality of listening go up, or does it disappear into the background?