I built the most part of my project, and now I just need to tune up the visual aesthetics of it on the screen, and to mount the controls up on the panel that is external to the breadboard.
I asked my mom to test my project, but I can’t say that the this is really representative because language was a bit of a barrier in understanding this experience.
However, I tested it anyways and I also gained some insight. It was obvious even on the breadboard with no labels at all that you need to click, rotate, tune and just keep doing something with the controls to run the experience. My mom sat down and immediately started tryng to hold, press, toggle, rotate different buttons and the potentiometer, so I think this is really obvious but I will need to label the buttons with “HOLD” or “PRESS ONCE” because it was not really intuitive.
I also noticed that she mostly was looking at the breaboard and controls and didn’t pay much attention to the screen or music there, probably waiting for some physical output. To fix that I think I will need to position the panel and the screen in a certain way, so the panel feels like the “keyboard” for the screen and the user understands that they need to look at the screen in order to understand what happens. Also, maybe having earphones as a part of the experience also will make the user pay more attention to the sound and audio changes.
The fact that it is a musical instrument that controls audio and some particles on the screen. It was not obvious that these particles produce the sound though. So, I realized I need to have some animation on the screen when the note is triggered so it is more obvious.
As I said, I don’t think my user was too focused, but this also gave me the insight of making the experience more isolated: to have screen and panel on in one place and close to each other, and offering headphones so the user is actually paying attention to the project and don’t ignore it.
Also, labeling the controls with “HOLD” or “PRESS ONCE” but maybe avoid labeling what they directly do and label it more vaguely. I feel like my mom was actually curious to figure out what each thing does so she kept tinkering with it so I guess this is a nice part of the experience I didn’t expect.
I needed to explain in the end what’s the idea of the experience, so I figured that maybe I need to run some “intro” on the screen, so the user gets the idea of what is happening, and then run the experience itself. And also more visual feedback would be a big change because it will give the user the idea of how what they do is impacting the sound I think.
I will work on the p5 visual part for now to make the design visually responsive, and add LEDs and button labels on the physical panel once new knobs and some additional equipment arrive.