Pressing Not Tapping: Comparing a Physical Button with a Smartphone App for Tagging Music in Radio Programmes

A physical hardware prototype--The Button was developed as a research probe to understand how radio audiences could discover, organise and consume music radio content at the touch of a physical button, the only control on a tiny handheld device. The Button allows listeners to tag tracks they like via a simple one-touch interaction method, and save them to a non-commercial online playlist service: BBC Playlister. Users can then export these tags to other music streaming platforms, such as Spotify, Deezer, etc. Following a user-centric design process, a large in-the-wild study was conducted over several weeks to investigate the value of the Button in aiding listeners' discovery of music. One group of participants was given a mobile phone app designed to facilitate tagging music heard on BBC radio stations; two other groups were given both the app and a Button (in one of two hardware versions). The findings revealed that Button users made significantly more tags on average than app users, indicating that a physical device could add significant value for radio listeners who want to tag music. Participants valued the simple one-touch interaction method, especially in situations where their smartphones were out of reach or contextual constraints meant that interaction with a complex device was undesirable or difficult.