OTO: Shape of Sound

Playful music app (not only) for DJs

OTO: Shape of Sound is a successful Kickstarter project. This intuitive musical instrument and controller offers countless possibilities to work with music. Our mission was to design and program an app that would communicate with a controller via Bluetooth.

Our solution

We didn't want our application to look like other music producing apps. Therefore, we bet on a simple and playful design. No imitations of a DJ mixing console with a lot of buttons, but a fun user-friendly environment. Be a cool DJ without a mixer!

Main benefit

OTO connects via Bluetooth to an app that has three main parts – SYNTH, MIDI, and DJ. You can create your own music in the synthesizer. The MIDI part is used to set OTO for external programs, e.g. GarageBand, and in the DJ section, you can play and edit any song by moving the tool and pressing the buttons. Thanks to the integrated sensors, OTO recognizes when it moves and rotates in different ways. Subsequently, a sound effect or function is assigned to each motion in the app. So with OTO, you can take music into your own hands. Literally!

Scope of delivery

First, we helped finish the low-level Bluetooth SDK, and then we developed the iOS user app. We designed a complete graphics and UX of this app as well.

Technology used

The application is written in Swift. For the DJ's part, we had to deal with Core Audio, a very low-level framework for working with sound. We also worked with Core MIDI.

Michael Samuels

Founder

Ackee is a very professional team and they do their best to understand and meet my needs as a client. This was a difficult project involving external hardware and a lot of low-level audio-manipulation, but they were persistent and helped to get things working.