Cooperation in musical prototypes design

This paper presents the main characteristics and discusses the rationale for the cooperative mechanisms implemented in CODES - a Web-based environment designed to support cooperative music prototyping. The CODES environment aims to provide actual cooperation, social knowledge construction, argumentation and negotiation among the different actors of musical prototypes design activities. A brief description of CODES and its original concept of ldquomusic prototypingrdquo is initially presented, characterizing this activity as non-technical products design. This is followed by concepts and descriptions of CODES cooperation mechanisms, illustrating how they increase awareness of other users and their intentions in the context of group activities for non-technical design. We present the design and prototypical implementation of CODES as well as some encouraging results from preliminary qualitative tests.