Robot Rock

User: 21 year old male, minimal to nonexistent music experience

Background: Electrical Engineering Major

Initial Playthrough:

• User played with a lot of the controls first, adjusting the key signature, beats per bar, and tempo
• Tried to play music before adding a musician, then added an acoustic guitar
• Listened to guitar for a while, fiddled with key and beats per bar (wasn't sure what they did)
• Replaced guitar with two metronomes to try to hear differences between metronomes with different keys (unaware that key, time, tempo were global settings)
• Couldn't hear difference between metronomes (obviously), replaced with a bass
• Took a few minutes to discover that moving the musician changed the way it sounds
• Enjoyed the sound a lot more when moved the bass to high complexity / high energy
• Thought that the musician properties box was very useful
• Added a bass drum and program crashed, restarted
• Started again, adding a few percussive instruments
• Adjusted key signature to no effect
• Moved them around until he found a beat that he liked, listened to it a while
• Added a bass and guitar, decided it sounded bad with both, removed guitar
• Liked the bass / hihat / handdrum combo, played with that a bit

Feedback:

What was the most frustrating?

• Lack of a piano
• Could not tell what the effect of key signature or beats per bar was
• Took a long time to figure out how moving instruments changed complexity and energy
• Energy and tempo seemed to be identical, confused on the difference between the two

What was most enjoyable?

• Can create music without any previous knowledge
• Properties box was useful
• Very easy
• Tooltips are very useful

Other notes

• User had a good understanding of how changing complexity changed the music
• Never used the delete button (may be unnecessary)

What I Learned

• The user is very likely to be drawn to the large play button and the settings around it. The musician selection box should be more prominent so the first thing a user tries is creating a new musician
• Key signature and time signature (or beats per bar) are very confusing to non music experienced users. It was very unclear that key signature did not affect percussive instruments, and beats per measure seemed to do nothing to the user (Low feedback from these actions)
• The properties box was very good, overall it was good for the user to receive feedback in the form of visual change or audio change