Versions Compared

Key

  • This line was added.
  • This line was removed.
  • Formatting was changed.

...


v1.0 of user-friendly implementation

The user has drag/dropped two files from the desktop onto the interface and the files have begun uploading to the system.


v1.0 of user-friendly implementation

The user has clicked on one of the uploading albums and sees the detailed album view with cover-art. Each field on this page is editable (the field highlights on a mouse hover and turns into a text-box on click).


v1.0 of high-efficiency implementation

The main screen that shows up on loading. The "+" button at the bottom manually brings up the list of uploading albums and previously uploaded.


v1.0 of high-efficiency implementation

An album (starmarker.zip) has completed uploading and is ready to be approved (and filed) into the playback system.


v1.0 of reporting interface (both aforementioned v1.0 implementations use the same reporting interface)

Currently with no filtering selected, all albums are being shown.


One of the user testing sessions at the WMBR studio.


Some of the interface widgets and task cards used.


v2.0 of our merged implementation

Notice the pause button by each upload progress bar, the clear approve/delete buttons for the album (and the removal of the trash bin icon previously in the top right corner), and the re-wording on the upper left tabs for clarity. Changes not seen include a screen hover on dragging files over the interface (an entire gray-out screen blankets the screen and says "upload"), a highlight on hovering over any editable fields (including the tracks, which then allow editing of artists on individual tracks), and other minor changes. Other forthcoming changes include being able to delete single tracks (also using a hover over track affordance) and a clear visual cue that uploading albums can be clicked on to see specific album information.


A view of the testing session on Monday March 18th.


v2.0 of reporting interface

Notice the Piazza-like tagging for genre filtering (allowing flexible genre additions as well as multi-selection filtering), release date range filter, and additional playback count columns (for easy sorting between commonly used date ranges). Note that there were several transparencies made for both versions of the reporting interface to reflect changes in filtering and when clicking on one of the playback count headers (which sorts by play count in descending order).

Back to the top

Briefing

Anchor
briefing
briefing

...

Panel
titleKaJaMi Participant Briefing

Thank you for taking the time to help us test the prototype of our system.

You will be acting as the “user”, our goal is not to test you, but to test our system and find flaws or inconsistencies that will improve the final implementation.

One person from our group will act as a “computer” who will control the experiment and provide tasks that we would like you to perform using the interface.

The other group members will act as “observers”, and will be taking notes on the experiment.

We will be asking you to perform tasks that relate to your current music director duties, but using our interface instead of what you are normally used to. At a high level these tasks will include importing digital music, previewing music and getting CMJ reporting data. We ask that you do not ask interface related questions during the test itself (as this will better help us find faults in our interface) but we can answer anything after the test is complete.

Thanks and have fun!

Back to the top

Scenario Tasks

Anchor
tasks
tasks

...

Track #

Track Name

Artist

Album

Label

Release Date

Genre

1

While I'm Dead

Starmarker

Killer Kilometer

Polyvinyl

20/02/2013

Electronica/RPM

2

Sand Beauty

Starmarker

Killer Kilometer

Polyvinyl

20/02/2013 

Electronica/RPM

3

Silver Lining

Starmarker

Killer Kilometer

Polyvinyl

20/02/2013 

Electronica/RPM

Back to the top

Observations

Importing tasks

...

Advanced Tables - Table Plus
width100%
columnAttributesstyle="width:60px;",style=width:200px;"

User

Import Files into the Library

Preview Song Tracks

Delete Importing Album

Inspect and Edit Album/Track Details

Approve Album

Music Director #1

  • User found the drag and drop interface to be intuitive and easily learnable, but isn't familiar with the fact that file start importing as soon as the mouse button is released. Instead, user searched for an "OK" button to start importing officially. This is a tradeoff we made to achieve more efficiency, but sacrifices some safety because the user may inadvertently drop the wrong file on the interface.
  • Learnability
    • User recognized the play button beside the track right away
  • Efficiency
    • User's single click on the play button starts playing the track right away 
  • Safety
    • If user clicked on play accidentally, a pause button appears in place of the play button to stop track
  • Learnability
    • On the user-friendly interface, the user had some trouble locating the trash can because it was placed far away from the user's line of vision
    • On the high-efficiency interface, User quickly found the "X" delete button beside the uploading album
  • Efficiency:
    • High-efficiency interface requires very little mouse movement to reach the "X" button, whereas the user has to move the cursor all the way across the screen in the user-friendly version of the interface.
  • Safety:
    • User prefers that the user-friendly interface gave a confirmation warning before deleting album
  • Learnability
    • User found the both interfaces to be easy to understand in terms of what information is being displayed
    • Both interfaces lack affordances in terms of what is editable and what isn't, user had to experiment by single clicking on the fields
  • Efficiency
    • User liked how both interfaces showed all the album and track information on one screen
    • User noted the directly editable fields are very convenient 
    • (E) User liked the comments text box in the album approval screen for adding notes for DJ (e.g. "This is the first album by this artist")
  • Safety
    • User noted a mistake in adding the genre can be easily fixed by clicking the "x" beside the genre tag
  • Learnability
    • User was confused about how to "approve" the album on both interfaces because he did not associate approval with the "checkmark" button
  • Efficiency
    • Again, a tradeoff was made between efficiency and safety: single click on the "checkmark" button will approve the album immediately
  • Safety
    • User prefers a confirmation message

Music Director #2

  • Learnability
    • Drag and drop was very straightforward, no problem
  • Efficiency
    • User really likes being able to type in the URL instead of downloading then dropping the file
  • Safety
    • No issues with safety
  • Learnability
    • (U) Had a hard time finding how to open the album information, tried to click on "Recently Uploaded" tab** Found the play button rather fast, but double clicked instead of single click, figured out it pauses it by double clicking
  • No trouble with efficiency or safety
  • Learnability
    • For a long time, user had trouble finding the trash can
    • Eventually discovers the delete function when she hovers over the icon and the text changes to "delete"
  • Safety
    • Tried clicking on it but surprised to find it deletes without asking her to confirm
  • Learnability
    • User figured out how to edit fields rather fast, but not sure how to "save" the entry (tried clicking inside the textbox when she really just wanted to exit the textbox - safety issue)
    • Tried clicking on "checkmark" icon, which could cause further problems as that will approve the entire album and make the edit screen disappear altogether
  • Efficiency
    • Prefers when all the information is in front of her and not hidden behind some buttons (need to be activated)
  • User used the comments section before approving, found it to be a really good idea
  • No other issues

Music Director #3

  • Learnability
    • Did not understand the "drag and drop" instructions
    • User had trouble uploading the files due to lack of clarity in instructions and also did not understand the “Today’s Upload” tab, tried clicking on other tabs
  • User struggled with learnability insomuch that efficiency and safety were not concerns
  • User found the play button very quickly and had no other issues
  • (E) User liked having all the information in one place (play button, album information etc.) for all albums
  • Learnability
    • (U) User saw the trashcan and assumed that it works the same way as the Windows Recycle Bin
      • Tried to look for a way to drag the album into the trashcan
      • Looked for a delete button by hovering over the currently importing album on the left pane
      • Eventually the user hovered over the trashcan and saw the delete but did not click on it and tried to drag albums over to it
      • Tried clicking on everything in the end to delete the album (e.g. tried to click on "don't approve" button, which did nothing but close the album view)
      • User notes usually the trash can is for dropping files on it, you don’t open the trash can ever
  • Efficiency
    • User can drop multiple files into a trash can, is there a way to quickly delete multiple albums?
  • Safety
    • User likes a place where you can open the trash can to look at deleted albums
  • No problem with interpreting the track detail view and editing the fields
  • User looked for a save button to confirm edits to the field (safety)
  • Date pop up is unnecessary, people usually only care about the year of release, not exact date
  • User likes the add genre feature to allow for sub-genres and easy deletion of wrongly labeled genres (safety)
  • No issues with approval

"Elf"

  • Learnability
    • User tried to unzip all files first then drag and drop the content directly onto the KaJaM interface
    • Our interface did not make it explicit that users are to drop zip files directly
  • Efficiency
    • User noted that he will want to drop multiple files at a time
  • Safety
    • User also noted that there doesn't seem to be a way to cancel a file dropped accidentally
  • Learnability
    • User was confused that the right side of the screen was completely blank, and instead clicked on "recently uploaded" tab to look for the tracks within currently uploading album
    • The tabs are not labelled clearly to communicate what it is really for
  • Efficiency
    • Quickly found the play button to preview each track
  • Learnability
    • Found the trash icon quickly due to its red color
    • Trying to kill the progress bar (to stop it from uploading)
    • User wants a feature that allows for stopping the import but not delete it (pause it for now)
    • Want to drag and drop the tracks onto the trash can to delete instead of clicking
  • Efficiency
    • Had trouble deleting all 3 separate tracks quickly, just deleting one at a time
    • Repetitively delete everything is a concern: no expedient way to delete everything
  • Safety
    • Don't need confirmation message, especially if it acts like a recycle bin like on Windows
  • Learnability:
    • Quickly decided to double click on the song track name, then figured out the single click is better
    • User suggested offering more affordances for single click because he is a "double-click" guy (learnability and efficiency)
    • He got that "Unknown" is the album name rather quickly
    • Don’t know what unknown date is (import date or release date?). Also English styled date is not good
  • Efficiency
    • What if there are different artists in each album (compilations are very frequent), want the ability to change the artist name for each track versus for the album (efficiency versus customizability)
    • Various artists for the entire album, but separate artist name for each song
    • User wants to potentially change the genre for each track
    • User does not value visual album art as much and prefer to have everything displayed as he considers himself to be a database guy
  • Safety
    • No issues with safety
  • No issues with learnability, efficiency or safety but want to see what he has approved during the current session (want to see what other people have uploaded recently)

Prototype Iteration 2

User

Import Files into the Library

Preview Song Tracks

Delete Importing Album

Inspect and Edit Album/Track Details

Approve Album

Student User #1


The drag and drop interface was intuitive and easy (learnability,efficiency).


Confused about how to pull up album details once the albums are uploading, lacks visual affordance for clicking on the uploading albums (learnability).


The now modified delete upload button was extremely obvious and easy to find (learnability).


Confused about where different fields go in the album information panel (e.g. she thought the "Unknown" was producer name and not album name, and she thought "Date Unknown" was today's date instead of album release date) and require more visual affordances for what each field denotes (learnability).

Consistently looking for a help button on the interface ("Is there help available for that?") (learnability).


Intuitive and easy for this user (learnability).

Student User #2

Learnability:
Efficiency:
Safety:

Learnability:
Efficiency:
Safety:

Learnability:
Efficiency:
Safety:

Learnability:
Efficiency:
Safety:

Learnability:
Efficiency:
Safety:

Student User #3

Learnability:
Efficiency:
Safety:

Learnability:
Efficiency:
Safety:

Learnability:
Efficiency:
Safety:

Learnability:
Efficiency:
Safety:

Learnability:
Efficiency:
Safety:

Back to the top

Reporting Tasks

Anchor
observations_importing
observations_importing

...

Prototype Iteration 2

User

Switch to Reporting Mode

Filter View by Genre

Sort View by Play Count

Export Reporting Data to Excel File

Student User #1


Easily found the reporting tab (learnability).


Removing the piazza-like tag for blue dot was immediately intuitive (learnability, efficiency), at which point adding the electronica genre was also easy.


Immediately decided to click on the correct column header, as she noticed the arrow cue and affordance in the column header (learnability).


The button for exporting to excel was obvious (learnability).

Student User #2

Learnability:
Efficiency:
Safety:

Learnability:
Efficiency:
Safety:

Learnability:
Efficiency:
Safety:

Learnability:
Efficiency:
Safety:

Student User #3

Learnability:
Efficiency:
Safety:

Learnability:
Efficiency:
Safety:

Learnability:
Efficiency:
Safety:

Learnability:
Efficiency:
Safety:

Back to the top

Prototype Iterations

Anchor
iterations
iterations

Design

First Iteration

Second Iteration

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back to the top