Design Description:
Describe the final design of your interface. Illustrate with screenshots. Point out important design decisions and discuss the design alternatives that you considered. Particularly, discuss design decisions that were motivated by the three evaluations you did (paper prototyping, heuristic evaluation, and user testing).
Implementation Description:
Describe the internals of your implementation, but keep the discussion on a high level. Discuss important design decisions you made in the implementation. Also discuss how implementation problems may have affected the usability of your interface.
Evaluation
User Population
All users are Music Directors at WMBR and fall directly into our target user population. We connected with these users through a group member who is a DJ at the station, but not a Music Director (hence satisfying the project requirement that none of the group members fall into the target user group).
The 4 users are within the age range of 20s - 60s, with varying levels of technical proficiency. Three are female and one is male. All had a need for a music importing system such as KaJaM! Some use the uploading feature more while others are more concerned with the reporting function. Each Music Director is typically in charge of one single music genre. Some music genres deal with more digital content than others, hence usage of the KaJaM! application is expected to differ across users.
Conducting User Tests
User testing was conducted at the WMBR Radio Station located on MIT campus, lasting on average 30 minutes in length. We briefed the users by explaining the scope of our application (limited to importing music, not playing or managing the library), and our hypothetical scenario. The briefing is kept consistent across users by showing them the same instruction sheet. We also explained that we are interested in how users naturally interact with the interface, and assured them that there is no right or wrong way to use the application.
All users interacted with a Macbook laptop owned by one of our group members and used the attached Touchpad + Keyboard to navigate the KaJaM! interface. One group member was acting as the facilitator and was in charge of walking the user through the scenario tasks, providing assistance only when necessary. The remaining two members sat alongside the user and noted down critical incidents + usability issues.
We decided that a demo is not necessary due to the intuitive interface of the application. The scenario tasks presented to all users can be found as follows:
Scenario |
Task |
|---|---|
Imagine you are a music director, Lana, and you wish to upload some albums to the digital library via the KaJaM! interface |
Open KaJaM! and log into the system |
You have downloaded 2 albums onto your computer: Starmarker.zip and KaJaM.zip and wish to import them to the library |
Import Starmarker.zip and KaJaM.zip into the digital library |
Before approving the KaJaM! album, you want to listen to one of the tracks |
Play a track in the KaJaM! album |
The track from KaJaM! album sounds familiar, and you quickly realize you have already imported the album and don't need it again |
Delete the entire KaJaM! album |
The Starmarker.zip file finishes importing, and you wish to make sure all the track details are correct |
Inspect track details |
You find incorrect and incomplete track details you want to fix |
Edit track details to reflect the correct information* |
You wish to approve the album to officially file it in the digital library |
Approve the album |
Before you leave, you wish to complete College Media Journal reporting for the month |
Take a look at the reporting data in the digital library |
You notice the reporting data is displaying all genres, but you want to look at only "Electronica" |
Filter the reporting data to show only "Electronica" |
Now all reporting data is on "Electronica" only, but it is not sorted by play count in the last month |
Sort the reporting data by play count in the last month, in descending order |
Everything looks good, but you still want to make adjustments to the reports based on physical CD play count before submitting them |
Export the reporting data to Excel file format for further editing |
All done with the tasks! |
Done! |
*Assume Lana Googles the correct album information, so facilitator provides all the correct information to the user on a separate sheet of paper:
Track # |
Track Name |
Artist |
Album |
Label |
Release Date |
Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 |
While I'm Dead |
Starmarker |
Killer Kilometer |
Polyvinyl |
2013-02-20 |
Electronica |
2 |
Sand Beauty |
Starmarker |
Killer Kilometer |
Polyvinyl |
2013-02-20 |
Electronica |
3 |
Silver Lining |
Starmarker |
Killer Kilometer |
Polyvinyl |
2013-02-20 |
Electronica |
Usability Problems Observed
Describe the Problem Here. (Severity Level Here)
Details Here.
Potential solutions:
Details Here.
Describe the Problem Here. (Severity Level Here)
Details Here.
Potential solutions:
Details Here.
Describe the Problem Here. (Severity Level Here)
Details Here.
Potential solutions:
Details Here.
What Users Liked
Details Here.
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.