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For mackVibes, we used HTML/CSS/Jquery to design and implement the front end. Initially we chose to use twitter bootstrap to design the application, but this implementation decision caused problems. Instead, and we found that using the jquery mobile library instead, provided for an easier designing stageeasier designing process, as well as a consistency for mobile web applications that we could not achieve using twitter bootstrap.
On the mobile application side we also used echonest, an api used to gather and display information about a song, artist, or track, and utilized this to present important information about songs played by the DJ.
For the backend we utilized node.js as well as bcrypt.js files to sure up the for password encryption.
Evaluation
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Because we had 2 interfaces for our project, we had to pull two different types of users.
- User type Type 1 - DJ: A College DJ that often Dj's at parties whether for pay or free.
- User Type 2 : - Party-goer: A College student that frequents parties
Of Of these user types we had 3 Dj's
- DJ 1: A Senior at MIT, with 4 years of experience Dj'ing fraternity parties.
- DJ 2: A Junior at MIT, with only about 1 1/2 years of experience DJ'ing fraternity parties
- DJ 3: A Freshman at MIT, who has only DJ'ed at about 2 parties thus far in his career
we We also had 3 three random party goers however (their background is less important since the focus group for MackVibes is the Dj community).
Briefing:
DJ
You've just finished setting up your equipment to DJ for the party tonight, however, you don't quite know what kind of music the crowd is going to like THis is a new audience, and you don't want to perfom badly. You have decided to Use MackVibes, which is a software that allows you to interact with your audience, by giving them options for songs to vote on by the click of a button, or simply provide them with the name of songs currently playing.
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- Vote for song to listen to in the next few minutes
- look at previously played songs from the audience and interact with that list
- Upvote and/or downvote DJ performance
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Usability Issues
User | Issue | Severity | Possible Solutions |
|---|---|---|---|
DJ #1 | Samples for the music in the queue and when searching would be useful | Minor | We will have difficulty making sure that this does not interfere with other songs being played by the DJ on other devices, but if desired we could utilize any other aspects of the EchoNest API to play small samples when prompted. |
| Drag and Drop to add songs to the queue | Cosmetic | Add jQuery functionality on the page should it be used on a laptop |
| Confirmation before playing a new song (Error Prevention) | Major | Add a small pop-up window over the queued item that confirms the play |
| Search is very useful | Good | N/A |
DJ #2 | DJ Feedback on the homepage does not display correctly | Major | Make the DJ Feedback more minimal, remove other inhibiting features like pop-ups |
| Queuing genres rather than songs could be useful | Minor | Have the genres as options to be queued and voted upon on the home screen |
| Set up Queue like Reddit, with upvoting/downvoting | Minor | To avoid popular songs becoming too overplayed, songs once played can be take off the queue. |
| Search lets user click an entire row | Good | N/A |
DJ #3 | Voting runs in the background for DJ | Minor | Maintain the voting tally while on other pages. |
| Sortable song lists | Minor | Using a jQuery / Javascript tool, implement columns for the data, and sort the info in those columns |
| No graph about song votes shows up | Major | If added, the votes for songs would show up as an option on the Vibes page of the DJ interface. |
| Make sure the bottom menu stays fixed | Major | Code fix in CSS, adding a fixed position attribute to the bottom menu |
| Change 'Previous Winner' to 'Now Playing' | Cosmetic | Code fix in HTML. |
| DJ feedback last hour shows no information | Minor | After songs have been played, more information shows up. Until then, perhaps show text that says no data has been gathered |
| Auto-Login after registering | Major | Change destination page after registration to the DJ interface page |
Client #1 | Case Sensitive DJ code | Cosmetic | Changed backend to ignore case. |
| Submit DJ code button should disappear after submission | Major | Once the party client has submitted DJ code, remove the button until party ends or party client wants to leave. |
| Rate the party at the end, between 1-10 | Minor | Add some feedback on the DJ interface that shows the party's votes from one to ten, add a voting feature on the client interface |
| Notification when voting starts | Major | Push Notification, color change, or device vibration are all viable options for alerting the party client that voting has started |
| Voting has a timeout so that the DJ doesn't have to go back and forth | Major | After a set amount of time, the voting poll closes without input from the DJ (although he can end voting as he pleases using our current UI). |
| Rate the Party feature is great | Good | N/A |
Client #2 | Tablet interface is weird - Text is too big, page is not scaled to phone | Major | Make sure text responds to change in viewport's size. |
| TEST ON THE PHONE | Major | Some features and UI elements (pictures, text, menus) need to adjust based on the width of the screen. Change the CSS properties that control those aspects and have them show up the same way regardless of screen size. |
| Send comments to DJ | Minor | Add a push notification-ready message tool on the client interface, perhaps on the home screen after the 'Submit DJ Code' button disappears. |
Client #3 | Vote on party and song. | Good | N/A |
| Change the voting style to that of 'Rate the Party', good for users used to one-click functionality | Cosmetic | This defeats the purpose of voting, and changes things way too much. We probably wouldn't try to change the UI to this. |
| Add an Undo button after voting | Minor | Once voting happens, an undo button removes one from the DJ's vote tally and the party client has until the poll ends to change his vote. |
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