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Sketch | Comments |
|---|---|
| This design emphasizes an exercise-oriented approach for singers to get better. Notice that each page contains sketches of two different pages. |
| Once she clicks the link, she is brought to the page with that specific tone exercise, shown to the left. She can see her last score, as well as a record of what happened during the last game she played. |
Analysis:
-Learnability: Generally, the learnability will be good, since the site has a lot of affordances and external consistency. These aspects include play buttons (for both song playback and recording playback), the record button, drop-down menus, and input fields for the various exercises. However, for a new user, it may be difficult to internalize the difference between "Exercises" and "Practice", so we may wish to watch our wording there.
-Efficiency: For an experienced user, this interface is not that efficient. There is no way to search for a particular exercise, and if the user has a lot of songs, the drop-down menu for "Practice" will get very large and unwieldy.
-Safety: Although not shown in the sketches, the user can delete recordings, which is a good safety point in case he or she accidentally pressed Record. The exercises themselves could potentially have poor safety if all of the exercises shared the same general page layout - the user that does not read the instructions may mistake one exercise for another.
* Storyboard 2 - Social-Oriented Design
Sketch | Comments |
|---|---|
| This design emphasizes a social-oriented approach for singers to get better. Notice that each page contains sketches of two different images. |
| Once Anna gets to the song page, she notices that her director has highlighted a particularly tricky few bars and left a comment. She begins practicing, playing the song back a couple of times, and then creating a recording, which she marks public so she can get feedback. |
| Here, at the members directory, Anna can see that Amy is free on Monday and Wednesdays at 3pm, and she can send Amy a private message suggesting a meet-up time. In case she forgot, she can also see that Amy sings the Harmony 1 part for the song they want to practice. |
Analysis:
-Learnability: The learnability of this site for recording and playing music is good because there are affordances and external consistencies with the play and record buttons and drop-down menus. The highlighting notes feature in the sheet music would be difficult to discover for a new user though because it is not explicitly explained on the website and the user would not know it existed unless someone else showed them.
-Efficiency: Overall, efficiency is pretty good because the drop-down menu is simple. It is straight-forward to go to current recordings because they are linked in the side-bar. Some things can be improved though. For example, after looking at the notes on the sheet music, Anna has to go the directory to mail someone. The site could allow users to go straight to another user's profile by clicking on their comment on the sheet music.
-Safety: We need to be careful about the comments on the sheet music. There has to be some mechanism that prevents users from accidentally deleting another person's comments if they highlight the same group of notes. Also, there should be some mechanism that allows users to delete recordings they do not want.
* Storyboard 3 - Practice-Oriented Design
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. |
Storyboard:
For Anna to practice her solo in The Sign, she first clicks on the "upload sheet music" tab to make the song available on the site. Then she moves to the "practice songs" tab, which shows the sheet music for The Sign. To first work on her solo pitches, she checks "my voice part" under "play options" and hits the play button next to the song title. After Anna becomes more comfortable with her pitches, she checks the Metronome box to practice rhythm with metronome ticks. When she has practiced up to speed, she checks the boxes for "other voice parts" and "accompaniment" to practice having a good ear for her part with accompaniment. Finally, she records herself singing by pressing the record button next to the song title. After her vocal director has had a chance to listen to the recording on his own time and leave a comment, Anna clicks on her "comments" tab to see her vocal director's feedback on the recording.
Analysis:
-Learnability: Generally the learnability will be good since the site has a lot of affordances and external consistency. 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 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 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. 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 or wanted to skip to a certain section, as well as a delete option for unwanted recordings or sheet music.