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Anna Denkrick constantly gets bombarded by compliments from her friends about how beautiful her voice sounds in karaoke, so feeling pretty good about herself, she joins an a cappella group at her school (about ten members). After the first few rehearsals, Anna discovers that she shines when singing popular, modern songs that she's heard many times before, but unfortunately, her a cappella group just assigned her a solo in an arrangement of the Sign by Ace of Base, a song she's never heard before. As a result, she has trouble hitting the right pitches and going at the correct rhythm. Furthermore, since she doesn't have a good ear for the melody yet, she gets confused in sections where the accompaniment (all of the other parts) is vastly different from her part.
The vocal director Bill Cutter has already spent a couple group rehearsals critiquing her solo, but their performance is only a week away and there are other things the director wants to work on. Anna feels frustrated because she wants someone musically talented to listen to her sing and tell her exactly when she misses a pitch, but no one has time is able to help her during rehearsal time.
Individual Designs
* Irene
Sketch | Comments |
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| In this design, individual exercises are emphasized, and there are very few ways a user can interact with other members of their group - perfect for someone who just wants to work on the basics on their own. |
| This design is more social, with something similar to a giant Facebook wall for the group on the home page. There are still exercises, but there is a greater emphasis placed on songs uploaded by the vocal director (the ones that the singer should be practicing). |
| These sketches are fun and cute but are meant for a mobile application. Since we cannot expect people to spend too much time on their phones, the mobile version is just a collection of short vocal games that the singer can play. |
* Jackie
Sketch | Comments | ||
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This design includes tabs for basic user operations and has a sidebar with various options to practice specific songs and voice parts. The main page shows the sheet music for the current song so the singer can focus on singing the notes. | |||
| This design stretch was made for children and is much simpler. Highlighted piano keys are shown instead of sheet music so children can more easily understand the music they are singing. The basic play options are located at the top of a tabbed page in big buttons and sliders with simple descriptions. The bottom shows feedback in words while the piano keys also light up in different colors to indicate a correct (green) or missed (red) pitch. | ||
| This design is specific to different user classes and therefore more personalized. Singers and vocal directors can create accounts and click on the tab that is specialized for them. Singers see the sheet music for the song they are singing, general comments made by others on that song, and different play, record, and upload functions. Visual feedback for pitch matching is also given on the notes, where notes are highlighted as the song progresses and a green note indicates correct pitch, purple indicates too high of a pitch, and pink indicates too low of a pitch. Song selection occurs in the bottom of the sidebar where the current song is highlighted. | |
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* Susan
Sketch | Comments |
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| The first sketch is more meant for personal use, with little group interactions. There are tabs on the side for easy access to the different sections of the site. The user can practice a variety of singing exercises, and can also play and record songs that the vocal director has uploaded onto the site. The director can listen to the recordings and make comments. |
| This second design is focused more on social interactions among the group. The home page displays an activity feed with comments from the vocal director. There are no exercises on this site, but there is more focus on the singing section. Group members can highlight music sections on the sheet music and make comments to the user. |
| The second design has a member directory that lists times that users are free to meet outside of practice. |
| For the third design, I tried to make an extremely simplistic design that would fit well on phone screens or just small screens in general. The home page is a group of 4 icons. The exercises section has swipe-able exercises (Tone Exercises: A, B, C etc.). Recording section no longer shows the sheet music because of the small screen size but instead shows the voice amplitude. |
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* Storyboard 3 - Practice-Oriented Design
Sketch | Comments | |
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| This design focuses mainly on allowing a singer to practice the specific songs his or her group is working on. | |
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This second sketch is from the point of view of a vocal director. The tabs are similar to a singer's tabs but replace "practice songs" with "vocal exercises" that the director can suggest to singers, consisting of descriptions or links. The "comments" tab is shown with a sidebar of student tabs that reveal each student's recordings and places to leave comments. |
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