CS295J/Class Members' Pages/Steven

Old prelim results:

• • C.1.3 Terms
• C.2 Garage Band study

This study presented a participant with the Apple Garage Band program. A sample song had been synthesized using the program, and parts of it “broken” in various ways (e.g. pitch changed, track segment deleted, etc.). The user was then tasked with returning the song to its original form.

• • C.2.1 Feasibility of a creative problem-solving task

This task required users to approach the song from a fairly mechanistic perspective, as segments which sounded incorrect could only be fixed via the manipulation of track variables. The search for such broken segments required a qualitative listening trial, however, and the user thus had to correlate the song’s aural product with its technical components. These individual problems allow each user’s intuitive problem-solving process to be assessed several times in the use of one gui without the process becoming repetitive. If the gui adheres to proper design rules and maintains task saliency, the user ought to have minimal difficulty in performing the first task, but even if there is an initial learning curve associated with the program, the user ought to see continual improvement in the effort required to solve each task.

• • C.2.2 Unique aspects and pertinence

The task revealed a few very interesting flaws in the program’s user interface design, as well as a few intriguing insights into the user’s process for reaching the goal. The interface was designed to appear elegant and to convey ease of use, but in doing so it seems to have neglected sign salience for the average user. Although the program has the ability to create very high quality music, it is bundled with Mac OSX and thus ought to be fairly easily comprehended by the average user. The study showed that the user had great difficulty in finding certain functions, however, and in some cases even tasks as simple as dragging a track segment to extend its length were achieved only after multiple attempts.

The user’s behavior was both puzzling and insightful. He replayed the entire song several times throughout the trial, both before and after each task and often during. He also would replay the segment of the song upon which he was working several times between steps. In attempting to fix the segment which had an altered pitch, for example, the user played through the entire song three times, then played only the concerned region repeatedly, then every segment besides the one with an altered pitch, then raised the volume of the altered pitch segment and replayed the region again; all before altering the pitch and repeating this process of multiple plays all over again. This example reveals that the user had a great desire to prepare himself for achieving the intermediate goal of pitch adjustment not by determining the segment which needed adjustment and then proceeding, but by mentally arranging the entire task before proceeding. That is to say, the user did not recognize his goal and proceed piecemeal by clicking the concerned segment and using a trial-and-error method to adjust the pitch. Instead, he replayed the song until he knew the degree and direction with which he would need to change the pitch, as well as how the adjusted track ought to fit with the other tracks, all before proceeding to the editing process.

• C.3 Photoshop study

This study presented a participant with the Adobe Photoshop program. Five images were pre-loaded, four of various monochromatic photographs from periods before color photography and one of a modern photograph of a man in New York City. The user was then tasked with altering the modern photograph to appear similar to one or more of the older photographs. The goal was one final, edited version of the original photograph.

• • C.3.1 Feasibility of a creative sandbox task

This task allowed users to approach the image from many viewpoints. Because there was not an inherent goal of converting the modern image to grayscale or incorporating certain aspects of the older images into it, the user could choose from a myriad of different aspects of the older photos to adhere the modern photo to. As a result, the task requires that the gui have extremely high task saliency, with readily understood terms and editing processes which match those intuited by the user. Such a task is thus less a measure of the individual user’s approach to the goal than it is a measure of the interface’s ability to cope with a myriad of user goals.

• • C.2.2 Unique aspects and pertinence
• C.3 Lessons Learned
  • C.3.1 Setup of study, metric methods
  • C.3.2 Possibility for future critique-enabled user workflow