Who Needs Interaction Anyway? Exploring Mobile Playlist Creation from Manual to Automatic

Currently available user interfaces for playlist generation allow creating playlists in various ways, within a spectrum from fully automatic to fully manual. However, it is not entirely clear how users interact with such systems in the field and whether different situations actually demand different interfaces. In this paper we describe Rush 2, a music interface for mobile touch-screen devices that incorporates three interaction modes with varying degrees of automation: Adding songs manually, in quick succession using the rush interaction technique or filling the playlist automatically. For all techniques various filters can be set. In a two-week diary study (with in-depth interaction logging) we gained insight into how people interact with music in their everyday lives and how much automation and interactivity are really necessary.