Korux PX1
A New Way to Choose How You Feel in the Music You Play.
University project
College for creative Studies (USA)
TANGIBLE DESIGN
INTERACTION DESIGN
PHYSICAL COMPUTING
EXPERIENTIAL UX
THE CHALLENGE
In an age of endless digital playlists and algorithmic recommendations, have we lost the tangible, personal connection to the music that scores our lives? Music discovery has become passive, often lacking a connection to our immediate emotional state.
THE GOAL
Our vision was to reintroduce a tactile connection to music. We wanted to create an experience that was tangible, visual, and beautifully immersive, allowing users to translate their feelings directly into sound.
MY ROLE
Concept, Interaction Designer, Creative Technologist
TEAM
3 Teammates
DURATION
4 weeks
year
Aug 2025
Why?
Digital music streaming has made listening effortless, but also passive.
Playlists appear automatically, choices blur, and the emotional act of choosing music disappears.
Korus PX-1 reintroduces intention.
Brings back a sense of personal agency in how we discover music.
The Core Idea
Korus PX-1 is a tangible console that turns emotional cues into personalised playlists.
Each coloured disc represents a mood.
Placing it on the device triggers sensors that read its identity and translate it into musical parameters like genre, tempo, and energy.
The experience
Choose your emotions.
Set the mood.
Place up to 3 emotion discs on the console.
Set Familiarity and Tempo
Two sliders refine the experience:
Tempo (40–180 BPM)
Familiarity (1–100%) - from familiar to exploratory.
Select the Genre
An LCD shows your top five genres (customizable through the companion app).
Turn the haptic dial to scroll, pause to select.
Hit the Play button
PX-1 sends your emotions, genre, and slider data through its system to Spotify and generates a playlist that captures your exact state of mood.
Enjoy the Music
Music discovery becomes something you do with your hands, not a screen.
THE PROTOTYPE
The prototype is a fully functional MVP that brings Korus PX-1 from concept to reality.
3D-printed body with laser-cut acrylic top panel
Tinted acrylic emotion discs
Arduino-based control system with Colour detector sensors
Communication with the app and Spotify API vis Python code
The prototype demonstrates the complete interaction from scanning emotion-coded coloured discs to generating playlists through Spotify’s API. This validated both the concept and its technical feasibility.
THE COMPANION APP
The PX-1 app mirrors the device experience in a digital space, extending control, feedback, and personalization beyond the console.
HOME TAB
The home screen mirrors the PX-1 console in real time, showing active mood discs and system inputs.As the user adjusts the device, the interface updates genre, tempo, and playlist data instantly, creating a continuous bridge between touch and sound.
Here are a few more ways the home-screen might appear depending on the context.
DEVICE TAB
The control panel for PX-1. It shows connection status, the discs currently in use, and the five genres synced to the device.From here you can browse your full disc library, assign or remove discs, and edit which genres are pushed to the dial. All changes update in real time while paired.
DISC INFO
Each disc carries its own mood, personality, and sound identity. The Disc Info screen lets users explore these nuances — from emotional tone to musical traits — and use them to shape playlists.With Find the Groove, a user can choose a single song or artist as inspiration. Korus then analyses its tempo, energy, and emotion to build an entirely new mix that resonates with the same feeling. It’s a way to turn a moment, or a mood, into music.
