User Analysis:Music students lead very busy lives: going to class, performing and attending other performances, and working to support themselves. One student, enrolled at Tufts and the New England Conservatory, spends a lot of time commuting between the two schools. Many students attend shows several times each week as part of their education. Another student is very conscious of paying for his education. Like all college students, they struggle to balance their time to meet all of their commitments and lead healthy lives.
These students all have short periods of downtime throughout their day: during their commutes, waiting for shows to start, and free time at work or during gigs. They can be thinking of their assignments, but due to the environments, they cannot easily compose if they think of phrases. However, if they do not write it down, they risk losing that idea. Their busy lives confine their productive creative processes to time when they are sitting at a desk with a pen and staff paper or their computer.
We will focus on developing for college students studying music. We assume they own an Android smart phone.
Task Analysis:
- Compose Music Sketches** Select meter and pitch of the phrase
- Divide into measures
- Place notes on a staff (choose which staff)
- Modify notes with sharps, flats, accents, note length, ties, slurs
- Add dynamic and expression markings
- Sketches Play Back to User** Play each note as it is placed on the staff so the user can make sure they are accurately transcribing the phrase. (We will assume that the user has headphones they can use if they are in a noisy environment and want to use this feature. This is a safe assumption because most people use their phones as their music players, too.)
- Unlike a piece of paper, the app can play back the phrase to remind the user of the sound and help them resume their train of thought about the phrase when they come back to it.
- Browse the Saved Files on the Phone** Create a new file
- View the file names the user has stored on the phone
- Select a file to view again, brings up in main view
Three high level tasks:
- Compose music
- Music playback
- Browse music saved on the phone
User Analysis:
We aim to provide a service for two types of user interactions. First, we want to allow users to search for and find information about HASS classes. Second, we want users to be able to contribute information about HASS classes that they have taken in a simple and easy fashion.
- Demographics
- MIT Students, age 16-23.
- Computer literate, English speaking
- Searchers
- Primary Intent
- Discover different HASS classes.
- Find HASS classes that have certain desirable characteristics (ie, small amounts of writing required).
- Expectations
- Site should be easy to navigate.
- Site should be secure and anonymous
- Site should have reliable information
- Characteristics
- Does not want to spend a large amount of time sifting through MIT Subject Evaluation pages.
- Short attention span.
- Want to be served both TLDRs and longer descriptions if necessary.
- Anecdotes
- Primary Intent
- Informers
- Primary Intent
- Share information with people that they might not know
- Prevent students from falling into pitfall HASS classes
- Expectations
- Should be very easy to submit information
- Site should be secure and anonymous
- Characteristics
- Angry people who had a bad experience
- People who had an above and beyond experience
- People who liked the professor, but may not have like the class
- Primary Intent
Task Analysis:
- Browse for easy classes (by type, CI-H, HASS A/S/H)
- Integrated advanced search by variety of fields
- Number of pages of required reading and writing
- Hours of work each week
- Time class meets
- Number of class sessions each week
- Integrated advanced search by variety of fields
- Submit reviews of classes → gain user credibility
- Link credibility rating to user’s certificate.
- Enable hashtags for fast searching
- Give overall ratings (classes could be worth taking even if they aren’t easy)
- One unified “central opinion” based on post ranking.
- Submission form for 1-sentence opinions.
TA Feedback.
As we discussed in our meeting, this project in this submission is not a stretch at all. Make sure you focus on something that's not just for MIT students, and that isn't just a layer over a database.
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