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| Aaron starts the program and logs in as the admin. He is presented with the main control screen. From he here can views all the songs in his library, playlists he created, edit his library/playlists, and 'start the party'. He realizes he wants the new Lady Gaga song. To add the song to his library he clicks on the upload song button which brings up your standard file dialog. From here he browses to the location of the song and clicks the upload button. Song added! There is a party coming up so Aaron wants to create a new playlist. He clicks the playlist button on the side then the new playlist button. This brings up a dialog where he enters the name and a description. Now that the playlist is created he can search through his library and drag songs to the playlist area or right click and ad them to the playlist. Now it's the night of the party so Aaron logs in and clicks playlist. He then sets the playlist he recently created as the active playlist. Now he can click the 'Start Party!' button and the music will begin playing and partygoers can now vote on the songs they like/dislike. |
| Julia goes to arronsparty.com to vote on the songs she wants to hear. She is directed to the "neutral" view which displays all the songs in the playlist in a scrollable list in alphabetical order. To vote for a song she drags and drops a song on the green, 'like' side. To vote against a song she drags the song to the red, 'dislike' side instead. To see the songs she's liked or disliked she clicks on the 'like' or 'dislike' button. If she were to click on the 'like' button the songs in the middle would be all those she 'liked' and the 'like' side would be replaced with a gray, 'neutral' side. |
Assessment
Learnability
The design for the library is very similar to that of grooveshark and other music programs. Therefore, the learnability curve should be relatively low. In addition, the file dialogs are the standard file dialogs so learnability will again be high. The drag and drop voting screen is more difficult to learn as it isn't like any normal voting interface. The songs have a textured touch to them to give an affordance of dragging which should aid learnability. The green, red, gray color scheme was picked to aid in learnability.
Visibility
The visibility of the vote screen is limited as one must use the scrollbar to see more songs and can only see all the songs in one category (like, neutral, dislike) at a time. In addition the screen doesn't display how many votes the songs have gotten from other users. The visibility of the active playlist is limited. The music library screen takes up a lot of screen estate to improve visibility of the songs in the library.
Efficiency
The vote screen is less efficient than a standard up/down arrow click voting system as dragging and dropping is slower than a click. It could also be annoying to have to drag and drop ~50 songs. The alphabetical order aids in knowing where to find a song although it may take a long time depending on the song's relative position. The admin screen has a search field to improve the speed of finding songs if the library is very large. Adding songs one by one with a dragging operation is not efficient. Creating and deleting a playlist is quick although as mentioned actually adding songs could be slow. When songs are in the same folder, uploading them will be more efficient by using the standard crtl/shift options for multi-select.
Error Prevention
Drag and drop makes it harder to place a song in the wrong category over a click. Although to correct an error, one has to change views which is less efficient. To delete a song from the playlist one simply drags it off the playlist bar. If the wrong playlist is started the admin selects the correct playlist and sets it as active to fix the problem.
Design 2:
Storyboard
| Aaron starts the web app and sees this view. He notices there is no music in any of the panes. He realizes he needs to add music to the library |
| He then goes to the file and edit menu. Under File, he sees and option for Add Folder to Library. He clicks this and is presented with the standard open file dialog for his operating system. He conveniently has all his music in one folder, and selects it. He now music in the panes. He currently has Music Library selected on the left, and he sees a listing of artists, albums and songs. As he clicks an artist or an album, the panes filter by the selection. He clicks Rick Astley on the artists pane, and then sees all albums and songs by him in the other panes. He drags and drops a few of the songs to the pane labeled Current Playlist. He sees he can edit the vote count to seed particular songs, but he decides to not do this. He goes back to file, and saves the playlist. He notices the playlist is now listed on the left pane under Music Library. He then uses the option Set Current Playlist As Active to have this playlist listed. He also notes a new option for Active Playist appears on the left hand side. |
| He then hears the first song being played. He goes to aaronsparty.com, and sees his songs listed. By each song is a 3 position slider ranging from hate to like. As he drags it, he sees the vote count increment or decrement by one. The listing is by order of votes, so he sees the song drop to the end or beginning after releasing the slider. He goes back and quits the webapp to stop the music. |
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