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Sketch | Comments |
|---|---|
| This design revolves solely around singers and helping them practice their part in specific songs. It includes tabs for basic user operations and has a sidebar with various options to practice specific songs and voice partsaid practice, including computer playback of different parts to sing along to. 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 through 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. The "for vocal coaches" tab would show options for uploading sheet music and leaving comments on recordings by different singers that the vocal director is coaching. |
* Susan
Sketch | Comments |
|---|---|
| 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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Sketch | Comments |
|---|---|
| This design focuses mainly on allowing a singer to practice the specific songs his or her group is working on, as well as allowing vocal directors to give feedback for those songs. These two user class are differentiated by user accounts. |
| 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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-Learnability: Generally the learnability will be good since the site has a lot of affordances and external consistency, including . These aspects include buttons, sliders, checkboxes, scrollbars, text boxes, an arrow for the drop down menu, sidebars, and tabs. A bad point is that the "play options" section might be slightly confusing in terms of what "boost volume" means and all of the various options and what they might mean when a user sees them for the first time.
-Efficiency: This design is pretty efficient as the tabs are all always consistent and straightforward, the songs and students are listed as sidebar tabs for easy selection, and the frequently used sections of play/record/stop buttons and play options are always shown on the screen, and the songs and students are listed as sidebar tabs for easy selection. However, the interface might be made more efficient by adding search bars for songs, students, and recordings if there are a lot of them.
-Safety: Good safety points include the ability to undo most operations, including switching tabs, changing play options, adjusting speed and boost volume, and playing/pausing playback. Some features that might improve safety are rewind and fast forward buttons in case the user pressed play accidentally and or wanted to skip to a certain section, as well as a delete option for unwanted recordings or sheet music.