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We had two editing interfaces that we can't decide between. We tested this by having different users test different editing interfaces first, give us their comments on it, then switch and give us their comments on the other one. I should've been careful to not tell users who made which interface, but I think I failed at this.
We tried to stay silent during observation, only giving tasks, then at the end asking questions about certain things the user did that they didn't explain, or things they may not have discovered.
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- She was trying to press disabled buttons often, like play when she wanted record on an empty song.
- "I can't tell what's disabled." (alan's interface) "This one is... better." (DD's) "I can't tell if they're the ones I want to press or not press, but they're different."
- (Another person, watching): "My expectation is colored is enabled and non colored is disabled. Looks like Only record is enabled."
- "It might be more reasonable if record were white, itunes"
User 3
Singing and playing instruments since he was 7
Doesn't own a smartphone, so I briefed him on Android usage. Function buttons, long tap, and zoom gesture.
We are sitting next to the piano and I mention that piano records nicely.
Bit worried about this user test because he seemed unwilling to hurt our feelings or worried about not making mistakes.
1. Record a melody
- hit record
- sing a melody. "da da..." On each of his long notes it switches between neighbor tones, maybe he's between tones?
- plays it back
- "eeuh, maybe I shouldn't do so much vibrato"
- "Hmm what should I sing, let me try one of the choir songs."
- "how bright is the day..." singing with words
- Finds stop fine
- "is there a way to do it so it's just the part that I .. ooh, ahh!"
- he wanted to listen to only the new recording, since he recorded after his old recording. He was tapping and accidentally opened note editing.
2. Edit a note
- his piece has a lot of tiny notes.
- Surveying interface
- "Oh are these just tracks so, okay."
- Plays back to try to find wrong notes
- Opens editing
- "Umm swipe anywhere to edit ok...."
- "What is this..." tries note lengthening, seems to get it fine. "Ok."
- Tries to do vertical zoom in gesture on the 2 up arrows, but it doesn't work. Figures out pitch change and does so.
- Ends by hitting delete.
- "Actually can I play something on the piano, let's see.."
- Plays the tune on piano to tune himself. Then tunes editing to piano. presses confirm.
- Since the recording is pretty bad and he would have to edit almost all the notes, I suggest he can re-record the song if he'd like. "Ok"
- pressing track buttons
- Sees inactive notes on purple track. "Nope taken." Green track: "Also taken maybe?"
- "So I don't want to erase these accidentally. Are all these the same..."
- (I took off the other songs so he wouldn't have to worry about that. They were from our testing and he would've come into the app with nothing saved.)
- He's recording with piano now. It records all the pitches perfectly. He makes a couple mistakes
- "so I made some wrong notes yay we get to edit"
- it merges doubles and has noise on octave very occasionally
- He plays the song to find points to edit, then taps the note.
- However editing opens even though it's running (maybe editing/tapping should move and stop cursor?)
- trying to tap place he wants to stop to stop cursor, goes hits stop
- humming note he wants so he can tune wrong note
- this song has pretty large range, space between pitches pretty small.
- deletes a noise note. playing again from beginning to check accuracy.
- place where he misplayed and started over.
I suggest he tries to move a note over, since he didn't try it.
- He drags left edge of note over until he sees the red line
- "see what that does and maybe go back and fix it..."
- After playing for awhile: "ok, I found the section that needs the most work." guess he did't recognize it until it played
- He's using the note editing interface quite efficiently now
- tries to drag edge of actual note (near center of screen) and nothing happens. Then slides arrows--"there we go"
3. Record a harmony
- he goes back to piano
- since he's recorded a choir song he has a very convenient harmony ready
- practices it
- "ok let's see if we can play that in time."
- plays song to get time
- he records over his original tune
- "so ok so it... ok. Ah. I think I forgot to save. Oh well". Guess he doesn't see undo.
- "save and see if it makes a difference." saved ok.
- "now let's see..."
- opens settings
- "acoustic piano..yeah that's fine. ok... hmmmm. nope oops"
- "Now the point is get a harmony to it"
- clicks purple track.
- practices main line again.
- "..mrm ok. So my melody became my harmony ok."
- listens to it to get tempo
- watching it carefully to get them lined up. Makes a mistake and stops.
- "eugh oops. forgot what I did last time. now let's see how badly I messed it up."
- Plays it back. "Oops, my tempo changed a lot" (dunno, he has the harmonies lined up a lot better than the other user tests and it sounds pretty close to me. Guess we should really make it easier to line up harmonies though)
- has trouble tapping a small note.
- "ok now you extend..."
- app crashes... it didn't save but I tell him he can be done with task 3
4. export Export the song
- Seems intimidated by instruction, "I've never done
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- that before...."
- "Hmmmmmmmm" for a long time
- poking at things in song
- "ok let's go back..."
- goes back to main
- looks at about
- "hmmm hmmmm"
- "tap and hold for options"
- "Export ha!"
- "I don't know what to do now but uh I assume this is what you want"
- I tell him that's fine I guess
opinions Opinions on this note editing interface?
- "sometimes it was hard to tell what note I was editing exactly, or what was happening exactly when I did
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- it
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- "
- "
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- It was easy to use. Yeah I'd probably want a little more time to tinker with it so I could be more efficient."
- There was some trouble with tracks, what did you think tracks were?
- "I didn't really pay attention to it. I dunno, I feel sorta stupid because now I see tracks was written at there. I think I was just not noticing it." Awww it's not your fault man
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- :(
What is x?
- "x's mean it can't extend. It would overlap another note."
- We added in the red bars since user test 1, so great, they did their job!
Try DD's interface.
- records the song again.
- finds trashcan fine
- zooms in to edit small notes
- pulling note lengths to get them right this time.
- very meticulous.
- figures out tapping out of edit fine
Opinions on this interface?
- "It was definitely easier to see what was going on while I was editing it. Uh. Yeah I think I prefer this one a little bit. It still serves the same function but it's easier to see."
Asked if he noticed moving left to right in this interface:
- "Oh! that is quite nice. Yeah I didn't actually notice that. Yeah, felt like I couldn't see what was going on in the other one."
Discovered usability issues
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