Zune Mood - a High Fidelity Prototype created by myself

Hey awesome thanks for replying, I was beginning to think people weren't really interested in the topic because no one had replied.

Yeah I heard one person from ZuneScene saying it as well, and then I told him what I had come up with.  I can't believe people are already doing that, I mean when you think about it thats pretty innovative

I actually don't own a Zune yet, but I think that I would probebly create something like that if I do own one.  That is, if Microsoft doesn't create something similar to what I have mentioned. 

I don't think it would be really hard for them to create, just simply when a song is downloaded there is an extra tag that is filled in with a particular mood.  So when you get a new song you don't need to categorize it yourself it simply does it automaticly

Hi guys,

I'm new the Zune community, and have been in love with the device since I first heard it was in production.  I am currently studying in my final year of College and one of my classes instructed us to find a product (or create a new one) and make 2 different high fidelity prototypes of it.  I decided to do it on the Zune and create a new feature called the "Zune Mood".

The concept of the Zune Mood is that the user has the ability of selecting a particular mood and the songs releating to that mood will automaticly play.  There are a number of moods that can be chosen, such as happy (might play pop music), calm (might play classical), angry/energetic (might play rock/dance respectivly).  In addition to this, I also modified the prototype to allow for colour change with accordance to the mood selected.  So for example say if the user selects the "happy" mood, the Zune case will change colour to yellow.  This can perhaps be achieved by having a clear casing on the Zune and lights inside that light up to different colours depending on what mood is selected. 

Another last feature I added onto this was that the Zune also has the ability to detect moods via say a strap which one can wrap around their wrist which is connected to the Zune.  It then reads the pulse and can detect the mood from it.   I thought this would be a great idea for people who are runners. As in, when people run they need to be in that set frame of mind, and I know from personal experience that if theres some dance music with a beat it keeps the person energetic and willing to keep going.  If you are running with the Zune detecting your mood, it can change the music by checking your pulse and play that kind of music.

To clear things up a bit, the first part of the assignment was to actually do some research with some target auidences which included surveys and such, so I chose adults, kids in schools, and athelets (focusing on runners).  So I figured that using their opinions on what could be added and what not, I came up with that overall concept.

For the second part of the assignment was to actually create the prototype (also known as the high fidelity prototype) which is basicly a working version thats interactive, which works like the real thing.

I ended up recieving an A for the assignment and the lecturer really liked the idea.  I decided to post up the information here to see what others thought, I do think it is a good idea.  I know some people are doing that now by editing the ID tags of the Zune and categorizing them into moods.

If anyone is interested, I can post up the link to the flash prototype that I made.  So you can see it in full working mode, it is only a prototype and was only meant to project the ideas, so it's not bug free