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- The "Add Genres" function allows any number of tags to be added to the album, so a single album can be tagged with multiple genres.
- The "Add Genres" function allows custom tagging, so music directors can enter their own genre tag (if it does not already appear on the list).
- Date picker for "Release Date" field is very useful - user noted "that's so nice!"
- Entire interface is very clean and intuitive. No messy cluttering of information, controls, or menu items.
Reflection
Overall, we learned that prototyping early and going through multiple rounds of user testing is very helpful in increasing the learnability of the final prototype. Finding usability problems early in the paper prototyping stage allowed us more flexibility when designing the computer prototype. Due to the fact that we had conducted multiple rounds of user tests (totaling over 7 users) with the paper prototypes, we were quite successful with user testing for the computer prototype - no major implementation changes were required for the computer prototype. Users specifically noted that we had taken their earlier suggestions during computer prototype user testing.
In addition, having multiple paper prototypes enabled us to request feedback on each one, combine the benefits of each, and form an ultimately more user-friendly application interface. Some users noticed that we combined the best of all paper prototypes in designing the computer interface. On the other hand, paper prototypes failed to indicate the complexities of implementation issues - many features we drew up quickly during the paper prototyping stage in fact takes much longer to implement during the computer prototyping stage. For instance, the overlay feature of "Drag and Drop" was easily prototyped using transparencies and highlighters, but required major time commitment to code up in Javavscript/CSS.
If we were to do this project again, we would like to conduct earlier computer prototype user testing, especially with the uploading interface. During GR6 user testing we discovered that there are deficiencies in the current interface that only music directors could spot. Our fellow classmates were not well acquainted with the WMBR workflow, and failed to identify some areas of improvement (such as the FCC obscene word marking feature). Furthermore, we should have, as a team, prioritized our tasks better and made more conscious decisions regarding the design. This would have allowed us to address the most important issues first (uploading, editing), and focus our efforts on components that are central to the purpose of the KaJaM! applicationDiscuss what you learned over the course of the iterative design process. If you did it again, what would you do differently? Focus in this part not on the specific design decisions of your project (which you already discussed in the Design section), but instead on the meta-level decisions about your design process: your risk assessments, your decisions about what features to prototype and which prototype techniques to use, and how you evaluated the results of your observations.