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- 5+ years of music experience from elementary and middle school
- College level education (probably not relevant)
- High technical level (probably not relevant)
- Own a laptop + microphone
- Don’t necessarily own a smartphone
- Casual composer (produce a piece over a long time)
- Either gender
- The people we interviewed don’t own No expensive composing software or electronic music hardware (though all of them probably although they have access to it from through MIT anyway)
Task analysis
For all tasks:
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- Why is the task being done?
- to fix errors
- to change things as part of the composing process
- What does the user need to know or have before doing the task?
- the user has to have notes already entered
- How often is the task performed?
- Extremely frequently -- writing music is an iterative process, and blocks of notes, harmonies, etc will be moved around a lot throughout the entire process. For many users, this will be more frequent than inserting new notes.
- Depends on the precision that the user desires; in one form of shorthand on paper the user simply indicated where the melody went up and down/was fast with very little editing, but mentioned that this was a lot harder to read later on than properly written notes
- How is the task learned?
- On paper, same as adding notes -- editing is, in that case, just removing (via eraser or scribbling) and re-adding notes.
- On software, probably by trying. Some users may be taught how to use the software.
- What can go wrong? (Exceptions, errors, emergencies)
- Can potentially move a note to the wrong place -- this would be fixed by moving it again
- In software, using the wrong shortcut could result in changes the user didn’t want (e.g. a user tried to change a set of 8th notes to 16th notes and ended up with a bunch of 16ths with rests in between)
3. Add Adding a new track / or voice
- Why is the task being done?
- to allow notating more than one note at a time
- to include different instruments or performers
- What does the user need to know or have before doing the task?
- Musical theory: some of the users thought more carefully about theory when adding the harmony than the melody.
- Generally, users would have written the melody first
- How often is the task performed?
- somewhat rarely, a few times per piece
- (we asked them to insert a harmony line, which doesn’t really test this)
- How is the task learned?
- On paper, by adding a new line
- In software, by searching through menus with the goal in mind, or googling
- What can go wrong? (Exceptions, errors, emergencies)
- in SW: add a track with the wrong instrument / clef / whatever
- on paper: didn’t leave enough room (either horizontally or vertically)
- in SW: accidentally delete a track
4. Export/Distribute Exporting and distributing music
- Why is the task being done?
- Put music in a format usable by others/self
- What does the user need to know or have before doing the task?
- Must have finished writing the music first
- Must know what format to export to (pdf, paper, midi, mp3, etc)
- How often is the task performed?
- Usually several times when a piece is close to being finished
- How is the task learned?
- by writing it up in a program, if it was written by hand, then printing
- if you don’t know your software, google or search help, or ask someone who knows about the software
- What can go wrong? (Exceptions, errors, emergencies)
- Printer problems?
- Audio codec problems?
- Export wrong subset of the music?
- Out of mechanical pencil lead?
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