Blackbox_Test_3500

MusiX is the project for DECO3500 Social & Mobile Computing Course from the Blackbox test team. MusiX is created for UQ students who are bored during gap time between classes at the Great Court. It aims to enhance face-to-face conversation and social interaction through music sharing to make the most of their free time.

Poster (Promotional Material)

Kickstarter Video (Promotional Material)

Kickstarter Video Link

Prototype

• Unity Project. Download here.
  If you cannot download this by any chance, please refer to the website version below (which has fewer features and is for backup purposes).
• Website Project. Click here

For Unity project, these platforms have the best compatibility:

• Unity Hub: 3.3.0
• Unity Editor: 2021.3.8f1

To work the Unity project:

1. Download the Unity project.
2. Open the Unity Hub.
3. click "Open" button, select "Add project from disk".
4. Select the Unity folder from Unity project.
5. Select the Unity Editor Version: 2021.3.8f1.
6. Open this project.
7. Build the unity project to Iphone.

Summary

Problem space

• Young people are socialising mostly through social media.
• Young people are lacking in icebreaker topics when socialising.

Design Opportunity

• UQ students have the intention to make friends during the gap time.
• Students like to spend their gap time on the Great Court.
• Music can build interpersonal relationships between young people because the same musical preferences can be a clue to similar values, and similarities in values contribute to social attraction. For friendship development, social attraction is the first social process that may contribute to relationship development.
• Young people want to make friends with people who have similar interests to their own.

Our solution

In the gap time between classes in the Great Court, implementing a system between UQ students through music sharing allow them to create communication and improve social interaction by letting them find common ground through the same musical preferences.

Designing and Prototyping Process

Observation, survey, and interviews:

Part 1: Observation, survey, and interviews between UQ students

• UQ students get bored during the gap time.
• Students like to spend their gap time in the Great Court, and some also intend to make friends during that time.

Literature Research

Part 2: Domain Research

• The users in their 20s wish to share their musical taste with various people, not only with their acquaintances, in everyday spaces and when on the move.
• Interactions between collocated strangers and sharing of song choices can create a sense of commonality between them.
• Music can create interpersonal bonds between young people as music preferences can be cues for similar or dissimilar value orientations, with similarity in values then contributing to social attraction.
• Sharing music in a shared space helps people to interact with each other in a face-to-face manner.
• Young people are willing to make friends with similar interests.

Part 3: Existing solutions

Although there are a variety of music-sharing apps on the market today, most of them are for sharing between friends, while those for sharing between strangers are on the internet and rarely focus on face-to-face communication and interaction.

For existing design attempts from research, the focus has been on young people listening to other people's music randomly. Alternatively, some attempts do not clearly show the user's music preferences, which may lead to problems such as not having an icebreaker topic to start the conversation.

Mid-Fidelity Prototype - Version 1

Heuristic Evaluation

Process

Users will provide comments on our Mid-fidelity models based on the individual tasks provided. Testing of users with different identities through heuristic evaluation. The results of users completing tasks are evaluated to find purposes that fit our theme and to improve them.

Result

The product lacks the opportunity for face-to-face interaction between users. Simply expressing through pictures does not allow people to empathize well.

Remaining Issues:

How to facilitate face-to-face communication between users.

Mid-Fidelity Prototype - Version 2

Heuristic Evaluation

Process

Users will provide comments on our Mid-fidelity models based on the individual tasks provided. Testing of users with different identities through heuristic evaluation. Due to a shift in our focus, the principles of the questions for the heuristic evaluation have all been changed to be more in line with our current philosophy. Based on the results of the evaluation, the preparation of a high-fidelity prototype was started.

Result

Adding emoji and friending features to the new prototype to help users better find emotional connections to become and stay friends.

Changes

Added chat function and listen together function.

High-Fidelity Prototype

Heuristic Evaluation

Process

Users will provide comments on our High-fidelity models based on the individual tasks provided. Testing of users with different identities through heuristic evaluation. Design tasks for new and improved features to be tested by experts Test results help us iterate on high-fidelity prototypes.

Result

Through heuristic evaluation, we found that the personal information our application displays to other users is not enough to give users sufficient opportunities to make friends.

Changes

Added the function of sending emojis and the feature of adding friends.

Cognitive walkthrough

Process

The purpose of implementing a cognitive walkthrough is because the design elements of our applications are very rich and complex and may be lacking in learnability. We decided to use a cognitive walkthrough to help us identify and solve these potential problems. We hope that our final system iteration will be somewhat easier to learn and less confusing for new users to use.

Result

Based on the cognitive walks completed by three experts, we found that the ease of learning our applications was not a serious problem, but some improvements were needed. Based on the results of the assessment, it was found that we lacked user guides, interactions that convey emotion to others and listening together.

Changes

To address these issues, the idea was to add user navigation to our next prototype version to make the meaning of the elements on the page clearer to the user. Adding the feature to send emoticons to the chat function. The ability to listen to other people's music together when they share it. Easier and more accurate use of our app will help students to be more effective in making friends during gap time.

High-Fidelity Prototype Final Version

Future direction

• Further improvements may be made to the listen together function; for example, when user one chooses to listen to a song with user two, user two will be aware that someone is listening with her/him. Corresponding features may be developed, such as showing who is listening to the music with me on the map.
• Focus more on those who are shared to make it easier and more accurate for them to receive and give feedback on other’s music.

Team Role

Member Name	Role
Bokai Zhang	Test superviser
Wenfang Hao	Leader
Yi Yang	Web Designer
Yuanye Zhang	Supporter
Yuqi Yang	Prototype Designer
Zhiyuan Xu	Unity Designer