| Logging in
Each music director has their own account so that starting views are pre-populated with the albums that they've recently uploaded or approved. Furthermore, things like CMJ reporting data can be pre-filtered to the genres which they each deal music director deals with.
|
| My Uploads
The
In this starting screen view after logging in. Approved , approved and unapproved albums are listed on the left hand-side. In the prototyping stage there was some contention between efficiency and learnability/safety. In particular, a more spread-sheet like design for fast input of details and approval versus a more visual view (e.g. album covers) with more whitespace. During the paper prototyping testing stage, there was some inconclusiveness as to the preferences of our user population, but this was resolved as the best way to move forwarduser preference between the two was inconclusive, and our final design incorporated many elements from both designs.
|
| My Uploads: Dragging Files
A gray lay-over appears covering the entire screen when dragging files are dragged over overtop of the interface. This was decided on during the paper prototyping stage as a clear way to inform the user that they can drag and drop anywhere, and not just the location that says "Drag files here to upload". It was a design decision to make dragging and dropping the only way to upload (as opposed to copy/pasting links or using a button) for simplicity. is used both as visual feedback and to communicate that files can be dropped anywhere on the interface (not just the small box that says "Drag Files Here"). This was chosen over cutting/pasting links or using a button for simplicity.
|
| My Uploads: Dropped Files
A screen appears informing the user of how files will be uploaded, as well as additional affordances for file manipulation within this dialogdialog with additional information on how to manipulate the dropped files before uploading (e.g. adding more tracks to a dropped album, removing accidentally dropped albums) along with the affordances for doing so.
|
| My Uploads: Upload Progress
A progress bar shows how close each upload is to completion of each album. The pause buttons allow the user to pause the upload. It was decided after paper prototyping that this would be convenient since users should always be able to stop an upload. Additional, album details cannot be edited during the upload stage, this was decided for simplicity after paper prototyping since allowing detail editing would complicate auto-detection of details from the music files themselves (e.g. if the user is currently editing album name, and we find the album name from the mp3). This is a trade-off of efficiency for safety and simplicity. button allows uploads to be temporarily suspended. Pausing was a feature decided upon after paper prototyping to give the user more control. Also decided after paper prototyping, was preventing album detail editing during the upload itself. This was decided for simplicity (and safety) since user-entered details may conflict with the details we pull automatically from the music files.
|
 | My Uploads: Uploaded
In most cases (like this one) details can be taken directly from the data found inside the music files, such as the album name, artist name, release date, record label and (sometimes, but more rarely) the cover art.
|
 | My Uploads: Deleting Album
This was a major change we made after user testing during the prototype stage. Originally, deleting an album required clicking on a trash bin appeared in the upper right corner of the album detail pane, but it appeared was out of the locus of attention such that of users as they failed to notice it. When they did notice, they tried to drag albums onto the trash bin (instead of clicking directly on the trash bin). We decided to instead create on two buttons on each album with clear color coding for Approval and Deletionlarge color coded buttons for approval and deletion at the bottom of each album. Deleting an album requires a dialog confirmation for safety. |
| My Uploads: Editing Album Details
Hovering over any editable field shows a yellow highlight around that particular field. This is to make it clear to the user field, for clarity on which fields can be edited. For album details, clicking on a field opens up a small dialog allowing for immediate editing of the field. Saving the input requires either an Album details such as album name, artist name and record label pop-up a dialog (with the field name e.g. "Enter Artist Name" for clarity/safety, saving requires enter key-press or clicking on the plus icon. This decision was made for both safety (accidental edits) and learnability (the pop-up has a title which tells you which field you're editing, e.g. artist name, album name, record labelcheckmark icon) while editing tracks allows inline editing (for efficiently editing large numbers of track names, clicking off the field saves the edit). These decisions were made after the user testing during paper prototyping as a compromise between safety (accidental edits) and learnability versus efficiency.
|
 | My Uploads: Release Date
Clicking on the release date field opens a date-picker which allows selection of a date. In our heuristic evaluation several points were made about our original datepicker implementation. If a date was previously unset, and a user clicked to open the datepicker then clicked off of it, the date would be set to today's date. This behavior has been modified (the date does not get set in this case).
|
 | My Uploads: Adding Genre
Clicking on "Add Genre" (or the plus icon next to it) opens a dropdown which allows for selection between either the most common genres used by music directors at WMBR or adding a custom-genre by typing in the text field at the bottom of the dropdown. These decisions were made after paper prototyping testing as music directors expressed their desire to tag albums with multiple genres, as well as add new genres easily. Later (in our final user testing for this GR) we discovered that they were excited/pleased with this feature.
Note: Clicking on "Add Genre" before our heuristic evaluation did nothing, but it was noted several times during heuristic evaluations therefore we changed it to have the same functionality as the plus button.
|
| My Uploads: Editing Track Name
Editing track names allows for inline-editing. This was decided upon for efficiency's sake (e.g. an album with 15-20 track names we couldn't pull directly off the music files) even though it poses an internal consistency issue when compared to editing album details. Pressing enter or clicking off the inline field saves any changes made. Note that one can also modify the artist associated with each individual track (for compilation albums where each track can be associated with a different artist), as well as delete individual tracks. These features were added after paper prototyping testing based on comments made by users. Each track can also be flagged as FCC dirty (the triangular icon next to the "x" by each track) for marking a track as having swear words (something music directors noted as being useful). Furthermore, previous to the heuristic evaluation, users were able to play multiple tracks at once. This behavior has since been fixed.
|
| My Uploads: Album Approval
Clicking on "Approve Upload" moves the album to the "Approved Uploads" section on the left. If a user tries to click "Approve Upload" on an already approved album, a tooltip informs them that the album has already been approved.
|
| My Uploads: Searching Uploads
Entering text into the search field in the top left automatically filters the uploads on the left. Searched fields include artist name, album name, record label and (in this case) genres. The decision and implementation came after heuristic evaluation where it was noted that many uploads would create difficulties in finding a particular upload. It was also suggested that we make the approved and unapproved lists collapsible, so a minus button appears in the top of the lists for collapsing these lists (which changes to a plus icon when collapsed).
|
| Reporting
Clicking on the "Reporting" tab brings the user to the reporting section of the system. There is a delay when loading different tabs (e.g. going from "My Uploads" to "Reporting"), and a lack of feedback was noted in our heuristic evaluation, therefore a waiting cursor was implemented to convey that the system was busy. The reporting view (for CMJ reporting) is currently displaying all data for all albums. The genre tags (internally consistent with the tagging system in the "My Uploads" pane) allows for filtering the data by genres. After paper prototyping it was noted by users that having more data present in the table all at once would be useful (despite the added complexity of additional columns) such as the play count in the past week, past two weeks, past month and all time. This is to make the job of reporting play count data to CMJ easy.
|
| Reporting: Filtering
The reporting view in this screenshot has been filtered for Electronica and the table has been sorted by plays in the last month in descending order. This is similar to the process a music director would go through in order to prepare the data for CMJ reporting.
|
| Reporting: Export to Excel
Clicking on "Export This Table to Excel File" downloads a .csv file which can be immediately opened in Excel to show the data, filtered as per above.
|