West Music Recording Corporation - Case Study Example

WEST MUSIC RECORDING CORPORATION (COURSE NAME) (DATE) West Music Recording Corporation Mission Statement The mission of west music recording company website is to provide artistes with information on recording. The site will ensure people find details about top music and musicians on a regular basis. Initial Data collection Three people contacted to represent the three groups of users of the website. One of the people contacted was a representative of West Music Recording Corporation. Interviews were carried out with each person to establish their requirements and desire of how the site should look like. The company representative gave the requirements required were such as providing the company profile. This profile would enable the business get as many clients as possible. Mailing capability was another thing the website was supposed to provide to allow their clients contact them with easiness. Music listeners were supposed to be incorporated in the site requirement specification. The listener stated some of the requirement they would have its to see the top musician on the billboard. The second requirement was to know the best ranked music at any moment. This would allow this person to download the latest music without going to a lot headache. The musicians who are the main clients of the company had to be considered, and a representative was found. The interview revealed the need of a profile page to enable the musician make a decision whether or not hire the company. They also required a contact page to communicate with the company without moving outside the website. Wireframes 1. Contact us 1. The submit button user clicks after filling in the form. 2. The navigation menu bar if user wishes to move from the page. 3. The form user fills in the details to be submitted as a mail. 2. profile 1. A linked name of the musicians for the user to find more details on the musicians. 2. A menu bar for navigation if user would like to move from the page. 3. About us 1. The menu bar for navigation in and out of the page. 2. Quick link for customers to access the contact page. 4. Home 1. Menu bar for navigation from the page. 2. The companies profile. 3. The different services offered by the company. 4. The details of the leading musician. 5. The names of the leading songs. 5. Location 1. The navigation menu for the user to move from the page. 2. A quick link if the user wants to contact the company. Target Users of the website The website will be used by music selling company, music listeners and musicians. Music selling persons John is a business man who owns a music store in New York City. He sells all genres of music at his store. To make high sales, he has to have the best and the latest music for his clients. The music seller will look for a site to provide those services. The music seller will have this information from the home page. The company will also replies to any questions the seller sends. Music Listener Wayne is a high school graduate who owns an iPod. He prefers to have the latest music in his iPod. He makes a lot downloads over the internet but he ends up not listening to most of this music. Wayne has decided to be finding the best musicians online to download their music. He will be looking at the website to get news about the top musician on the bill boards and the best music. Musicians Dre is an upcoming musician from West Indies. He would like to record his music in a reputable company and alongside famous musician. He walks to down town companies which do not have a strong profile. The site provides Dre with a profile where he can see if the company fits what he wants. Provision of the contact page will also allow him to enquire on anything. Evaluating wire frames Questionnaires that would evaluate the wire frames were formulated. They were divided into open and closed questionnaires. The main objective of the questionnaire was to test if navigation, visibility and provision of what clients needed were right. The user chosen to fill the forms was John who would represent music listeners. Some of the questions that the user had to answer is whether the site was easy to move from one page to the other one. The question on visibility asked whether the user could read the writing with the color used. Enquiry was also made whether the user liked the color used to make the web pages. Provision of information was looked at by asking whether the user got what he/ she required from the site. Questionnaires were the preferred mode first because of their acceptability and accuracy. The person conducting the survey will have all the data provided for the user in written form for analysis later. This is better than interview where some of the details might be overlooked leading to their loss. This mode also tends to be cheap compared to other modes. Cheapness is brought by the fact only papers and cost of printing is required. If it was another form like interviewing a video recorder would be required to record what the user was saying. The method also proved to be simple to evaluator. This is ensured by making sure the writings are made in a language under stable to the evaluator. The only required thing was to tell the evaluator the need of answering the question correctly. Outcome of the evaluation was positive but with some changes to be made on the pages. One of the changes was the incorporation of telephone number of the company on the contact page. Another change is making the top musicians name on the home page to be a link. Changes that are to be made is the linking the top musician to their home page from our website. Prototypes 1. Home 2. Contact us 3. About us 4. Profile 5. Location User Centered Test Thinking aloud protocol This technique involved an artiste visiting the site to enquire about recording his music. The artiste was supposed to talk loud of what he was doing and how he was doing it. This technique was selected due to the reason it did not require experts during testing which would be costly. The technique also allowed for simplicity for it did not require a specialized lab to be carried out. The pages of the website were first made in preparation of testing. A scenario was created for an artiste. The artiste was to carry two tasks in the scenario which were contacting the company and reading the company profile. The subject was chosen because it is the main activities the user might want to carry out with the site. The testing was carried out by asking the user to speak loud of what he was doing and what he expected. The test revealed artistes visited the profile page before contact us page. This would lead to improvement of the website by having profile menu link before they contact us. Co-discovery learning This method was chosen because it required a minimum of two users, which would be cheap. The method is cheap because no specialized labor personnel are required. The method required having two computers for use. The test users identified here were music listeners. A scenario was formulated for them to search and enquire for the latest music. The scenario was chosen because the user were interested more on getting information on music. The tasks would also involve the user trying to navigate through out the page. This navigation would reveal if the user had a problem in locating information on the pages. The procedure of how the test was carried out the two users were brought and told what to do. These users were also requested to verbalize their activities. The users were informed they were supposed to assist each other in carrying out the work. The verbal messages from the user were recorded to be used for future improvement on the site. Lessons learned The evaluation technique was effective due to the fact it produced some positive suggestions on the site. The result obtained from the evaluation was a need of change on the menu bar. The users asked to be provided with a vertical menu apart from the horizontal one. The evaluation also revealed the need to change the arrangement of the menus in the menu bar. The profile menu had to come before the contact us menu. This would ensure musicians did not have to move to the end of the page to get the first menu they require. The need of placing the search button on the right part of the page was also seen. This came as a result of many users trying to look for it at that point. Users said every site they visited the search was always place on the right top. Communication was the main problem identified during the evaluation process. This communication came mostly where tester said something and we would not comprehend. Testers as they were given instructions also could ask two to three times which meant communication was not effective. Testers who were not cooperative became a problem. People who were approached to carry out the test would sometime turn down the offer without any genuine reason. Testers who agreed to participate sometime would negate from the case study and start doing their own things. Ensuring that the tester whom I chose communicated effectively will be one of the main things I will do in the future. The tester will also be effectively tutored on the scenario. This will ensure tester will carry out the activities they are supposed to participate in without negating. Instruction to the tester will be both verbal and written in the future. Reflection on the design process The design process exposed me to the need of collecting requirements from the users. This was seen after exposing the prototype to the users. Users accepted the website because they were part of the design from the start. The advantages of usability designing were also seen during testing because users did not request for a lot changes. This was due to the fact that all user requirements had been included in the prototype. Collecting of user requirement was involving because some users gave conflicting requirements. This required my ability in decision making, which sometime would not favor all the users. Another problem was starting to collect requirements from users without informing them on the need of providing this information. This led to some users providing incorrect information or refusing to participate. Effective communication mode was seen as a requirement in collecting requirements and also testing. Human had different level of understanding and speed of doing things. This was seen by the fact that some people completed a task faster. The understanding part came when people were given instruction written down. Each group was seen to come up with their own meaning from the writing. This led to the need of explaining anything written down to the testers. References Carroll, 1995. Scenario-based design: Envisioning work and technology in system development. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Read More