Panze: A Multimodal Preschool Music Education System

This Master's thesis describes a design research project in which an interactive computer system was designed that envisions to contribute to the musical education of children aged two and three years old. The intent was to stimulate the child's inherent musical abilities through active musical interaction with the system. Requirements for the system were formulated based on literature about general child development, humancomputer interaction, interaction design & children and Dutch preschool music education. Interactions between children and adults in a Dutch preschool music education method were used as examples for the interaction between the child and the system. The result of the project is the Panze system. It makes use of a pedagogical agent (Panze) that acts as a role model for the child. The child can interact with the system by responding to the music by movement and singing, and by using tangible objects. A Wizard of Oz experiment was done to evaluate the design.