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Discovered usability issues

The "Users" column indicates how many (out of 4) of our testers had that issue.

Issue

Users

Possible fix

Severity

Small notes are too difficult to tap; caused some cursing

4

We added a "hit extender" to help resolve this, but it doesn't help in the x direction. We could potentially add next/prev note buttons.

Critical

Tries tapping arrows in old-edit rather than swiping them

4

Usually they figure out how to use it fine after trying a few more things.

Minor

Accidentally start recording/play in the wrong place

4

Maybe copy Finale's method of playing from beginning usually, not sure about record. Pretty recoverable.

Minor

App crashes after export

4

Bug

Critical

Phone doesn't pick up melody anywhere near accurately

3

?? Editing or re-recording is often sufficient. User often needs to hold mike closer to mouth or sing with a steadier voice (vibrato does not seem to help), maybe if they have to undo recording several times the program can suggest this. Recording seems to record just as well with words being sung as with random syllable, so it's not that. A user suggests that the app display your actual voice pitches so they can tune the lines to the voice. A user resorts to using piano to record, but this isn't our use case.

Major

Instrument change/track muting not visible

3

1 person only knew where it was because he found it while looking for something else. These features need to be more visible. One user suggests double tapping track button to bring up options.

Major

(old-edit) should have move left/right function. 2 actions is "bizarre and awkward"

3

Main/deciding reason people cited for preferring (new-edit), wouldn't be hard to just add.

Critical

Confusing back button with okay in old-edit interface, even after using many times

3

Perhaps move them closer together, where you can see them all?

Major

If a song contains two notes on the same pitch, they often fuse, and there is no way to split notes

3

Add a split note function

Major

Feels like it's impossible to coordinate harmony with melody

3

1 was just really careful, 2 suggest playing the melody back while recording harmony, 1 suggests program do some AI to coordinate melodies and note lengths.

Major

(old-edit) Arrows obstruct note you're editing

3

This is especially common on notes near start of song, since they can't be centered. Maybe if overlay were more transparent.

Major

Want to move/delete segment of notes en-masse

2

a third person had an error in their music that would've been much more easily resolved with this function. We should have it.

Major

Wants to be able to have notes same length/multiples of same length like in sheet music

2

Maybe we should do some AI for this?

Major

It's not obvious that notes are editable

Unclear, at least 3 non-tested people

??

Critical

Accidentally presses play when they mean record. May not realize it even after trying several times to record.

2

Not sure what's causing this?

Minor

Found export difficult to find

2

??

Major?

Stop is difficult to find while recording.

2

Seems like users expect tapping the cursor to stop the song, or that stop should be red. We might try changing that.

Minor

Can't tell which buttons are disabled

2

Might be more but I only asked 2. Should make buttons non-gray or something

Minor

Phone records an octave above where it should, only very briefly though

2

This and other noise during recording are easily deleted in interface (Besides the fact that they're too short)

Cosmetic

Didn't notice undo button

2

??

Minor

Accidentally go into edit mode for a note when trying to move cursor

2

??

Cosmetic

Wants to zoom closer/farther than min/max zoom

2

Minor

Didn't notice zooming into scale was possible

2

Might be more than 2, but 1 was instructed. ??

Minor

(new-edit) Accidentally presses trashcan while editing

1

Moved trash can after this user

Fixed

Wants a next/prev note button when editing

1

Only 1 mentioned this, but others were also editing essentially linearly

Cosmetic

Don't realize what note length not being able to increase means

1

This was fixed after a user test by implementing red bars when notes butt against each other.

Fixed

Does not realize that tracks record other overlayed melodies

1

He actually recorded over his original melody, which was pretty bad. Saw his grayed-out melody on other tracks and thought they were other people's songs. This came up in heuristic testing too; it's unclear that people realize what tracks are until instructed to "record a harmony"

Major

Play doesn't begin from where expected

1

Cursor did not follow editing, and played from seemingly random place. Cursor usually moves to thing you're editing in word editing, so maybe it should.

Minor

Wants to be able to add notes

1

We could add this somehow

Cosmetic

(old-edit) Loses pitch while trying to change note and has to keep re-playing

1

User suggested this would be fixed with next/prev note function. Another user hummed the pitch they wanted while adjusting to keep track of it.

Minor

Note disappears while editing (new-edit)

1

Bug

Critical

Buttons at top of screen make user cover screen

1

switch top and bottom buttons

Minor

Wanted to hold record to record

1

??

??

Wanted to be able to pull notes past each other

1

We could make notes on a track switchable.

Cosmetic

The default instrument does not sustain, doesn't match interface

1

We could switch it

Cosmetic

(new-edit) wanted the delete button closer to note

1

Conflicts with another user's accidentally pressing trashcan

??

During playback, single note on another track played twice (replayed when a 2nd note on another track started)

1

Bug

Minor

Looked for exported song in my files

1

He was one of 2 actual android users, maybe other users would've tried this. Not obvious where to look for export.

Major

Feels like scroll is broken when recording is shorter than phone length

1

Came up in a heuristic test too. Maybe make scrolling available anyway

Minor

(old-edit) Shortening/lengthening note was not working, note wasn't even visible on screen

1

Bug?

Major

Reflection

"Discuss 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."Our project was so shiny we used it as a mirror." - David Benjamin

"Despite the limitations of paper prototyping in representing our application, we learned that the spiral model of development was quite valuable, as our project saw a pretty large overhaul between user testings during that iteration of design. We learned that what users expect can often be pretty unintuitive; for example, there are a lot of expectations about where buttons are and how they will work that users probably couldn't tell you they expect to see, but that their behavior in repeatedly using the wrong button shows (e.g. using play as record and thinking it's broken). Personally, I learned some Java and Git from Alan; I hope I didn't frustrate him too much. If we had to do it again, we should probably have gotten GR4 in on time so that our testers didn't get reassigned. That was kind of unfortunate." - Di Liu

"We prototyped the easy things and not the hard things." - Alan Huang

"We evaluated the results of our observations by, I don't know, thinking about them." - Alan Huang

"Really hard." - Alan Huang

"Totally." - Alan Huang

It was fun! Thanks!