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DrumPants Turn Your WHOLE BODY Into A Musical Instrument [Pick Of The Crowd]

Last week I introduced you guys to FestEvo, which is an awesome new app that will make festival-going safer, more fun, and generally more awesome than it already is. (A lofty goal, I know.) It must have put me in the raver mood because this week I have something that’s also totally fest-tastic: DrumPants.

 

Watch this video and try to not to smile.

 

 

Am I right?

DrumPants is pure, smile-inducing adorableness. It’s one of those objects that just looks like so much fun and I can’t help thinking Aaawww when I watch the boys in the video jammin’ away on their legs, looking kinda goofy but not even caring because they’re having that much fun.

 

(Which, for the record, is kind of how all drummers look always.)

 

drumming

 

Co-founder Tyler Freeman is a drummer himself and he noticed that he and all his drummer buddies were constantly “drumming” on their legs, on steering wheels, on pretty much anything they could get their hands on. His reaction? Let’s create a way for them to use those same motions to actually drum. The result is DrumPants, an awesome amalgamation of design, music, and tech.

 

And it’s prototype-driven.

If you blinked you might have missed it, but co-founder Lei Yu briefly mentions that her team used design thinking to create their prototype. For those of you who haven’t heard of this methodology, design thinking is (in a nutshell) a process of developing a product or service that focuses on prototyping and iterating rapidly. You create a low-fi prototype, bring it to your customers, get their brutal feedback, and then adjust your prototype accordingly.

 

While design thinking isn’t as well known as The Lean Startup movement, the two methodologies have a lot in common. The goal is to make sure your valuable time is spent developing a product that your customers actually want to and will use, rather than investing a whole bunch of time and energy into something that no one will ever use.

 

While I was already grinning gleefully at the sheer fun of DrumPants, the fact that they are backed by a process I firmly believe in (and one that I’m going through myself with the startup I work with) gives them that extra boost from “fun idea” to “viable business,” in my book.

 

wear it

 

They’ve even expanded the functionality beyond drumming.

I know they’re called DrumPants, but it turns out they’ve figured out a way to make them useful for things other than hammering out a badass beat. Because DrumPants was created with Arduino, you can hook it up to your phone, your Netflix, YouTube, a PowerPoint presentation… Really, the possibilities are infinite. It’s like “Clap on! Clap off!” for 2014.

 

Too bad it won’t be ready for Christmas…

I have more than one drummer on my list who would absolutely love this gift. Why not head over and drop them some dough so that we can all make a bunch of drummers and festival kids happy next holiday season?

 

Photo & Video Credits

DrumPants

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