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We're starting with Alan's interface.
Singing and playing instruments since he was 7
Doesn't own a smartphone, so I briefed him on Android usage. Function buttons, long tap, and zoom gesture.
Course 18 and 8, "I'm definitely not a computer person"
We are sitting next to the piano and I mention that piano records nicely.
Bit worried about this user test because he seemed unwilling to hurt our feelings or worried about not making mistakes.
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- "Oh! that is quite nice. Yeah I didn't actually notice that. Yeah, felt like I couldn't see what was going on in the other one."
User 4
Starting with DD's interface
"I warn you, I do usability testing for my lab, so I will, like, give you user interface feedback."
singing for as long as can remember in a wide variety of genres
"I just finished singing, so I'm warmed up"
Course 6, so technically advanced
"I don't have any theory background, only performance."
1. Record a melody
- he reads the about page
- "I was not expecting instructions from the about page."
- "I'm right handed by the way"
- "There are a whole bunch of useful buttons on the top surface of the app, meaning I have to block the whole screen with my hand to use them."
- checks out settings
- thinking up a song
- Asks which end is the mike end
- "do do do" indiana jones. The phone picks up a handful of notes
- "Also the fact that the stop button was not red was confusing momentarily"
- "That was nothing like what I put into it! I'm going to try doing that again"
- Recording while looking at screen. It still fails
- "Ok I'm gonna radically simplify song."
- gets 2 notes.
- "Well the UI did what I expected"
- "I was very tempted to hold record rather than tap it. If I did that I'd expect it to record until I let go, then it would stop."
2. Edit a note
- "smaller ones are significantly harder to tap"
- "I would favor notes overlapping. UI stopped me from doing that. I wanted to pull notes over each other."
- plays again to confirm.
- "The default instrument does not sustain, gets soft so it doesn't parallel the interface."
3. Record a harmony
- goes straight to the right place--tracks
- records one note and it appears on the same line but uh as like 10 things
- deleting all notes one at a time
- "I wish the delete button were near the note like everything else"
- "I can't make a note longer than the screen because it centers the note and then I can't reach the arrow."
- "That's very frustrating. I don't want the screen to shift when I click on the note."
- There's a bug, the note on the second track only played on the second note of the first track
- I" don't have the ability to selectively mute tracks. LIke I would expect if I double tapped I could silence them or not."
4. Export the song
- "I saved"
- ?? looks confused
- taps the android menu button, gets nothing
- Exits apps and looks in my files
- it's not there.
- "Yeah I don't know what I'm doing."
- I suggest he try renaming the song
- "I have no clue how to do that"
- goes into song
- clicking save again doesn't have me name it; only the first time
- Figures it out and finds export
- Naturally it crashes
Try other interface
- I tell him this phone is more reasonable at recording
- He records a more reasonable song
- touches editing
- "I can't scroll on the timeline (canvas length is less
- stroking and touching arrows "It's not doing it! Nothings doing anything, did I break it?" I think the note somehow disappeared. He was trying to lengthen
- slides pitch and it works.
- "I wanna be able to tap outside the note and have it revert back."
- "confused why sometimes when I hit play it starts at beginning, sometimes where it is."
- getting confused by trashcan location but probably because he started with the other interface
- "clicking to start while playing didn't do anything. want it to go to start, still playing. But I'm biased though because I'm used to editing music in finale, which will always plays starting at beginning unless you tap cursor, in which case it starts where you tapped it."
- "Whoah it went back. Oh I see that button undid as opposed to approve. Okay."
- "So I wanna move this note. I don't know how to move a note in this interface. I feel like I'd have to do two end adjustments."
- "Also I want when I hummed that everything should be the same length, it isn't, you're using seconds instead of a standard beat measurement. I want it to standardize and stack the notes I think I sang next to each other and eliminates gaps between them, because when I'm singing it takes awhile to catch on and produces a gap. The way it is if I wanted it to be precise I'd have to touch every single note."
Compare interfaces
- "So I think this (DD) interface behaved a lot more like what I was expecting"
- "This (Alan) one it was much more clear how to edit specific attributes, but most of the time I just wanted to grab note and move it around, didn't care for precision"
- "I think the first one was better purely because of the movement. In the second one I would enable movement so that if I yanked the middle of the note it would preserve length and move."
Is there anything in (alan) interface you would want in (dd)?
- "(alan) was clearer to me, because each icon is related to a specific action, so I felt more comfortable modifying a specific attribute."
Unprompted
- "The fidelity of note registration compared to what I performed is low enough that I'd favor it as composing rather than recording device. It enabled me to play around with things easily. It would've been distinctly useful for it to do an actual audio recording and then play it back and play what's here. So if I had an idea I would record voice and then play with the staff until it matched up with what I sang."
- (in Alan's) "I think actions when you select notes on the bottom right of the screen are better than on the left hand side of the screen because your hand gets in the way. It'd be better if you put all icons on the right."
Disabled buttons
- (dd) "Buttons are dark, don't afford button actions"
- "But grayed out don't afford pressing even more so the other ones must work"
Discovered usability issues
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