GR3: Paper Prototyping

Project: Pitch Perfect

Prototype Photos

Briefing

Our project's name is Pitch Perfect and we are creating a website for a cappella singers. It can be hard for an cappella singer to perfect his individual parts when singing in a musical group. Pitch Perfect will allow users to practice a cappella songs online, with an emphasis on social interactions among the group. The site allows users to practice their parts with the other voice parts in the background to simulate singing with the whole a cappella group. Members can listen to other people's recordings and make comments.

For the purpose of this test, you will be an a cappella singer named Anna who wants to practice her solo for an upcoming performance. There will be 3 tasks total. Don't worry if you have no previous music experience- the tasks use very minimal music terminology. While you are doing your tasks, there is a possibility that a notification may come up. Feel free to address the notification first and go back to the task you were working on. Our prototype is very new, so any problems you encounter are the computer system's fault. 

One of our group members will be observing you throughout the tasks. Your responses will be kept completely confidential and if you would like to stop at any point, just let me know. Any questions before we begin?

Scenario Tasks

Task 1
Make a recording of the song "Good Riddance". For the options on that page, please set the metronome to 110 and have additional voice parts in the background. You may sing for as long as you would like. After recording your singing, please save your recording as "Super Solo".

Task 2
Go listen to Ben Recording 1. Make a comment on his recording. You can write whatever message you like.

Task 3
Take a look to see if you have any comments on your recording "Super Solo" and take any extra actions needed.

Extra Task
Oh, you got a message! Read the message and respond if necessary.

Observations

Observed Usability Problems

• A major learnability issue was navigation using the drop-down menu, as evidenced by users staring at the page for a long time to find a new page before trying random buttons out of frustration. The drop-down menu was also low on efficiency because even after users discovered its location, they seemed annoyed having to go back to the drop-down menu every time they wanted to change the page.
• Another learnability problem was understanding the play options. This issue was brought up multiple times as one user checked "My Voice Part" to try to record themselves singing, another user wondered if they could choose what to play when the "Other Voice Parts" box was checked, and yet another tried interacting with the play options sidebar before choosing a song.
• The layout of the profile page proved to have usability issues as one user took a long pause when tasked with finding a recording on the page while another thought aloud that it was hard to find the person's availability because the bottom portion of the page drew all of his focus.
• For adding a comment to someone's recording, we observed that our UI lacked external consistency. When users were tasked with writing a comment in the comments section located in the sidebar, some of the users were observed to instinctively want to write directly in the bottom of the sidebar before they saw the "Add Comment" button located at the top.
• On the "My Songs" page, two users both took a while to find where the comments were located, so the two tabs in the sidebar indicating "Practice" and "Comments" should be changed for increased learnability.

General Feedback

• Make the drop-down menu extremely noticeable by making it colorful or adding a "Menu" label to it, since it contains the main navigation for the site.
• Add a back button for easier navigation, as one of the users felt that our UI had safety issues in terms of being easy to make mistakes with.
• Have a popup window when the mail icon is clicked instead of redirecting to the Inbox page, where the user might be confused that they were brought there to click "Compose" to send a message. One user said they expected the popup window so that they could send their message and then easily continue working on the original page.
• Categorize the profile page, perhaps in terms of time sensitive material, recordings, and everything else. A calendar was suggested to help the user visually see a person's availability.
• Take out the left sidebar when not absolutely necessary to reduce clutter on some pages. One user specifically pointed out that the people sidebar may not be too useful for fast access, so it might be better to have a drop-down menu of names under "People" or a grid of faces to choose from before showing a person's main profile with a back button.
• Add a "home" or "feed" button instead of expecting the user to know that the "Pitch Perfect" title might be clickable.
• Clarify what the play options mean (My Voice Part and Other Voice Parts) and if they should be checkboxes or single selection. Play options should be grayed out when the record button is on.
• One user noted that the use of icons rather than a lot of text was a nice part of our interface.
• Another user commented that everything involving reading and sending messages was very clear.

Prototype Iteration