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- College Party DJ
- Young adults
- Hosting parties and gatherings of similarly aged listeners
- Voluntary service
- Professional DJ
- Experienced and well-versed in the DJ community
- Gets paid to DJ
- Radio DJ
- DJs on the radio
- Playing blind to an unknown audience
- Experienced and well-versed in the DJ community
Observations & Interviews
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Interview No.1 - College DJ
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Backed up with song requests and unable to add some of his original flavor into the songs, he finds that the college DJ has a much harder job than it might appear. The main method he uses to get a feel for how the crowd is enjoying his music is to react to expressions from people, listening for audio clues as to what the audience is feeling at the time. Owning both Android phone and tablet, he is technologically equipped to handle many different software based tasks while working the booth.
What we learned:
- it is hard to gauge satisfaction of an audience
- it is difficult to get feedback on his performance as a DJ
- he resorts to looking at expressions of the audience to see how they feel
Interview No.2 - Professional DJ
Interviewee #2 has been DJing for about 8 years. He was raised around music, and even played a few instruments including saxophone and piano. He prides himself in his vast collection of music, and very much enjoys finding new remixes, of songs. He feels a great sense of joy playing music for people, and rekindling any past emotional ties his crowd feels with certain songs.
One of the problems he faces though, is choosing which song will entertain his crowd. Often times he is thrown into an event without any idea of what music to play, and what the crowd will respond to. Approaching a job in which he gets paid with trial and error is a hard enough task, without having to read a crowds emotions. It becomes even more difficult as he immerses himself in his work, and trying to make smooth transitions.
He also finds it difficult when people come up and try to suggest a song because it will either ruin the vibe currently going on, or is a song that has already been played.
What we learned:
- the DJ really has an appreciation and love of music and want to share it with his audience
- it is hard to select songs to entertain a crowd
- he resorts to looking at expressions of the audience to see how they feel
- it is difficult to look at the audience while managing songs
- users submit uninformed song requests
Interview No.3 - Radio DJ
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He doesn’t have a tablet or a smartphone, but he does own an itouch.
What we learned:
- it is hard both satisfy and gauge the satisfaction of an entire crowd
- it is difficult to respond to song requests
- For the radio, DJs must filter out inappropriate words
Needs & Goals
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Based on our observations, we have identified the following goals for our user classes.
College DJ
- Get better information about current trending song popularity amongst party-goers
- Find a way to stablely monitor volume levels
- Accurately visualize the crowd’s moods and attitude
Professional DJ
- Allow the audience to unobtrusively provide feedback ( So the Dj does not get distracted, and so guests stay attentive to party)
- Give audience information about current vibe of the party and which songs have been played to get better song requests
- Select quality songs for an event with limited information about the crowd
Radio DJ
- Gauge the satisfaction of the entire crowd
- Unobtrusively deal with song requests
- Find an efficient way to filter out bad words from songs