Overview of Design
This is a design that focuses on safety while striving for reasonable efficiency.
- Motivation: This design focuses on the most critical task of the three identified in GR1 (importing music). The CMJ lists, which are used less often (submitted on the order of once a week) are not a major focus of the design, but may be accessed through a tab interface at the top.
- Design Idea: This design keeps editing separate from uploading by fusing a master-detail design like those used on iPad applications with the pane-based design of Windows 8 applications for the purpose of selecting editable components in a modal interface ("Metro"-style)
- Scope: Since importing and reporting are the most important tasks of a music director, these tasks have been emphasized for the purposes of this interface.
- *Pro: *By emphasizing safety, more error-prone users who might be less computer-savvy will be able to be sure that they will not import data with incorrect data. The compromise in using a master-detail design should add efficiency for high-volume music directors to get their job done without much fuss.
- Con: Aspects of the interface (including the questions asked and modal nature of most of the detail view) may be less efficient than would be ideal for high-volume music directors.
An overview of the entire interface is shown here, details regarding each component will be explained in the storyboard below.
|
|
A detailed example of the main KaJaM! interface |
The KaJaM! interface when editing an album |
Storyboard
Sketch |
Explanation |
|---|---|
|
Lana sits down to upload some releases |
|
She opens up her e-mail to view some digital downloads |
|
She opens up the KaJaM! interface |
|
And drags and drops the link from her e-mail to the interface |
|
It automatically starts to download |
|
She continues to drag and drop links for upload... |
|
And will be prompted if the file is password protected |
|
When she's done uploading, she looks over what's been loaded for each album |
|
Interested the an album, she plays a track from it |
|
If it's got correct data, she clicks "YES" (It's okay) |
|
And the album is loaded and saved and disappears from the list |
|
When she finds the error on Starmarker's album, she clicks "NO" (It's not okay) |
|
And is given options to change the release |
|
She selects "Track Names" |
|
And is given a list of the names to edit |
|
She edits the names and clicks "Done" |
|
And is returned to the "What's Wrong?" screen, where she clicks "Nothing," as everything is now correct |
|
Since everything has been corrected, she clicks "YES" when asked again whether the album is now okay |
|
Running out of time to do more work, she leaves the remaining albums to be handled by Adam (he will see them when he logs in) |
|
Hurrying to submit her CMJ lists, she opens the CMJ submission for in another window |
|
And switches to the charts tab in KaJaM! |
|
She clicks the RPM genre tab and uses the top plays listed there to populate CMJ |
|
Her job done, she logs off, content in the knowledge that more digital media has been catalogued than ever before |
Analysis
Learnability
This design builds off the learnability aspects of Design 1 from Sketch Set 2 by:
- Allowing the entire window to act as a drag-and-drop interface for URLs and files at any time
- Using external consistency with other interfaces
- Featuring reactive buttons that highlight when the mouse is over them (avoiding issues caused by users who are unfamiliar with the Windows 8 pane-style interface, used here for the "editor/What's Wrong?" view of an album)
- Making the editor a proper mode rather than an alternate path to improve internal consistency
Efficiency
The design is reasonably efficient.
- The region in which to drop a link or file is the size of the window, making steering much less of a concern when dragging and dropping links from Lana's e-mail
- Links may be dropped like files. This consistency of the two actions demands no interaction with a text box, nor does it require two different methods of interaction.
- The "YES" box for approving albums is made visible in a consistent location in the album view
Unlike Design 1 of Sketch Set 2, however, some efficiency of editing was sacrificed in favor of improved safety and learnability by making the "editor" a mode activated by the "NO" button rather than a set of hidden widgets.
Safety
The design is relatively safe.
- Making the entire screen drag-and-drop reduces the chances that a user will fail to drop the file for uploading (as would be the case if only a part of the screen was active)
- Unifying the drag-and-drop action across both links and files prevents errors caused by lapses where a link is dragged and dropped instead of copied and pasted into a form
- Should information be required, the design may be made safe by preventing submission and highlighting missing fields
- Users may easily see and edit fields with a decreased possibility that users will incorrectly edit something they did not mean to thanks to the pane interface for editing
The least safe aspects of the design relate to:
- The compact nature of each download in the left-hand list (it's possible to select the incorrect album)