MusicLife is an application that aims to provide a social platform for elders to share their life story or music experience with other people through physical events.As music has a strong connection with human memory, music will be used as a support tool to help seniors recalling their memory and also as an ice-breaking tool.Since human beings are actually the witness of the development of human society, the life story or music experience of every human being is valuable for researchers on teasing out the development of human society and saving some traditional music.By doing this, seniors can still contribute to current society and find out their values.
https://github.com/deco3500-2017/Genius/blob/master/research.md
https://github.com/deco3500-2017/Genius/blob/master/concept.md
Totally 2 Testing Sessions and 4 prototypes were conducted during the project MusicLife and our team had changed our original idea dramatically based on the receiving feedbacks from the prototypes and interviews.According to the difference between the previous concept and current concept, we split the whole design process into following stages.
At this stage, our concept is a mobile application only, allowing seniors to share their music and the application is still a draft.Hence, we designed the first interview and paper prototype at the same time in order to figure out if the application usability is high among seniors and what kind of application or application style design they preferred.Following is the brief summary of the first interview and paper prototype:
According to the collected responses from seniors, we had found that the seniors do have their smartphone or mobile tablets but they use phones only for calling, texting and reading news purposes.The normal channel that seniors approach music is through radio, TV, CD, and church and most of them dislike listening online music due to several personal reasons.During the conversations, we also discovered the seniors would prefer to avoid using applications as they need to learn new technology but if the application is simple and easy enough for them to use, the elderly express a willingness to learn how to use it.
In terms of interface design, seniors actually didn't care about if the interface is fancy or not, they more concerned on the big buttons with clear identification.For example, a big square button with big text in it is fine for the seniors as they know what they should do for the buttons.Also,to make it more easier to navigate,simple motions can be used as gestures for the application such as clicking & dragging.However,the questions we asked during the first interview and paper prototype is on the wrong track,as the main point of the application is to allowing seniors sharing music/life experiences.
Paper Prototype: https://github.com/deco3500-2017/Genius/blob/master/Prototypes/genius_PaperPrototypes.md
Interview 1: https://github.com/deco3500-2017/Genius/blob/master/Interviews/genius_interview1.md
In this stage,our team conducted 1 interview and 3 prototypes to implement our new spinner concept and following is the brief summary of them: According to the interview, we had found that the seniors love to share their stories with other people, no matter strangers or not unless they show the respect of them.Also, the participants express their preference on sharing the experience through face-to-face rather than online as they indicated that body languages and eye contacts can help explaining their experience better.Based on the collected results, we found that the spinner idea is better than the previous but it still needs further details.Hence, we conducted another two prototypes that aim to figure out the spinner design.The results of the first prototype reflected that the spinner idea is great but the interface design of spinner is too complicated.Hence, we change the spinner design to only include play music, record and likes buttons.However, both of the results show that our spinner idea is not fully implemented as the music content is hidden so deep in the application.It's hard to understand what the application is used for with explanation.
Interview 2: https://github.com/deco3500-2017/Genius/blob/master/Interviews/genius_interview2.md
Digital Prototype 1: https://github.com/deco3500-2017/Genius/blob/master/Prototypes/genius_DigitalPrototype1.md
Digital Prototype 2: https://github.com/deco3500-2017/Genius/blob/master/Prototypes/genius_DigitalPrototype2.md
Digital Prototype 3: https://github.com/deco3500-2017/Genius/blob/master/Prototypes/genius_DigitalPrototype3.md
Digital Prototype 4: https://xd.adobe.com/view/88db3b06-88db-4285-b189-327b1e46002c
At the beginning after the team is formed, we were interested in the educational apps that have translate function and learn new language. However, after we did a lot of discussion and shared our idea, we find out something more interested then the translation app. At last, we decided to do a app that can share music and your own story for elderly.Hence,we conducted the first interview and prototype to find out their needs.
Based on the receiving feedbacks from seniors, most of the seniors express their preference on an application with big texts and buttons rather than a fancy design application. Our team refined the design a little bit, big square tabs are created on top and will be used to separate different pages such as Home, Music Application, Cover Song and My favourite. Text buttons are used as main button styles instead of using icon buttons, reducing the confusions of users. In addition, download function is not taken into considerations as some seniors might not have enough mobile data to download a song or it's a bit difficult for them to learn how to download the song.
To make the application easier to use, our team decided to provide online music services only and the idea of using emoji as a category is changed to using text only to separate different kinds of music. Hence, the seniors can know what kinds of music experience they are interested in easily.
Moreover, the purpose of our application is letting seniors share their life experience or experience on music to the strangers to contribute to current society. Our team decided to focus on the sharing aspect, but what we are concerned about is the way of sharing music/life experience. In terms of daily observation, the normal way of application sharing is posting online or leaving comments. But these kinds of ways are more used by younger generation rather than seniors. The seniors might have a huge different preference on mobile sharing. To improve the application usability, it's important to find out the sharing habits of seniors. Hence, another interview is designed to figure out what would be the best way for elderly to sharing their stories. Although the seniors indicated that they don't mind the interface design is ugly, our team still believed a clean layout design will guarantee a better user experience. Thus, in the aspect of application interface design, our team is more focus on placing elements such as buttons and tabs orderly and logically and adjusting sizes to create a clean and logic application interface.
Base on the user testing at the stage 2, we found out actually most of the senior is not interested in listening music, they prefer meet each other in physically. Therefore, we have changed our idea to an app that can create event and let others join. The event to let senior gathering together and share their own stories. Nevertheless, we changed our prototype to select your current emotion instead of choosing music catalog.Furthermore,we need to decide how the prototype will be done. First of all, we have sketched the paper prototype to have a rough design. After that, we need to find out which application is suitable for our team to make the digital prototype. We have few choices include Adobe XD, sketches, inVision and Unity, and our team has difficulty to make a choice between these apps because we require an app that is functional and interactive. After our tutors gave us the feedback, we decided to use Adobe XD to make the prototype base on the low learning curve and easy to use.
Another interview and prototype is coducted during the mid-break in order to test if the spinner idea should be taked into action.For the spinner design,we decided to use a digital spinner at first.However, the interview said they would like to use a physical spinner rather than a digital one, so we designed a spinner which is physical using paper and makeymakey to make it function.Also,we learnt that the first interface design is to complicated for seniors to use as there are a lot information and they would prefer a simple spinner with few buttons only.Besides,the app was told that it cannot see the music part by tutor, it is too deep in the app to find out which cause the main confusion about the concept.Hence,we decide to change the process of searching stories.After emotion category is selected,We pull the music square first where users can quickly look through all the post.If they want more information about the post,they can click more details button and it will bring them to events that related to that post.
Music is at everyone's heart. Elders like to keep themselves busy by playing games, listening to music, gardening ,cooking etc. They like to meet people and talk to them. Being away from family,friends and children sometimes feels painful.They need someone to talk and listen to them. MusicLife App gives them an opportunity to meet people and grow socially and emotionally.It has very easy interactions that does not require them to learn to use.Elders listen to music of their time and thatt too categorised according to mood. They get a chance to meet people with the same mood and near to them.MusicLife works as a therapy to promote happiness and friendship among elders.They can find their happiness in others happiness and encourage each other when they are sad.It definetly brings in music of care and share into their lives.