Draft narrative -- HCI Group Project

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Date Posted: 17:13:35 08/14/02 Wed
Author: Michael Supancich
Subject: Draft narrative

Explanatory Narrative Description About Final Design - Iteration #1: Compact MP3/Radio Player

The Design shown in views 1 through 3 represent the front/top, rear and bottom views of the proposed MP3 player interface. Here are some of the features and their functions that are shown in these views:

View 1:

Overall: In both of the earlier designs, all buttons were designed as 'push buttons'. Having easy to use buttons was one of the key demands by our
prospective client section.

1) Power button: The power button is marked with an ON sign clearly printed on it. When the power button is turned on, the display screen gets lighted up,
to indicate that that the device will function well. When the device is turned on, it will automatically go into MP3 mode. When the button is pushed a second time the device will turn off.

2) MP3/Radio mode button: The button is clearly marked and located in the top center of the front of the device. When pressed allows user to switch between the MP3-player mode and the radio mode. When this button is pushed in Radio mode, the mode will switch to the MP3 mode. The top half of the display will display a list of songs starting at song #1. The bottom half will display 'Now Playing' along with other information - the title and artist if a song is playing, the play time left for the song and the time elapsed. If the button is pushed within the MP3 mode, the mode will switch to the radio mode and the display will display the station on the top half and on the bottom half it will display'Your listening to AM [or FM] radio', along with the current clock time.

3) AM/FM Buttons: This button is located on the top left of the device. It is a split button such that if one pushes the left half of this button, it enables one to switch to Radio AM mode. On the other hand if the right half of this button is pushed then the mode switches to Radio FM mode. When this button is pressed, the display will show the station as AM or FM on its top half and on the bottom half it will display 'Your listening to AM [or FM] radio'.

4) Radio station Tuner: On the top-side of the player, we will find two buttons that can be used to tune to a particular radio station. The
buttons move the stations up or down (right button and left button respectively) on unit at a time. The station currently tuned will be displayed below.

5) Menu and Select buttons: Two arrow labled buttons allow the user to scroll up and down in the screen to check the list of tracks stored in the MP3 player. The song that they are currently on is highlighted on the display in the list. One one song is highlighted at a time. Moveing up and down will not change the name of the song currently playing. These buttons are not functional in radio mode. When one hits the top/bottom of the list, the list does not wrap. The button between them is a play/pause button. This is a duplicate of the button located below. It is placed here as a duplicate to function both as a select button and to make it easier to scroll and select. Both of these play/pause buttons toggle between these two modes.

6) Bottom line of buttons: There is a line of large buttons across the bottom. These are play/pause, forward, backward and stop. Forward and backward move the songs forward or backwards one at a time. They do not wrap when the list is ended. The song moved to will begin playing immediately and will be highlighted above.

7) The volume buttons are large and are located on the left side - visible from the front and back. The top button moves the volume up. The bottom button moves the volume down. As volume is changed, the volume bar along the bottom will change.

8) The headphone jack is clearly marked on the top left of the player - it is marked with a headphoen jack image.

9) We are providing the feature that the user should be able to recharge the battery. The curent battery life is displayed in the bottom right of the display using a shaded battery.

View 2:

This figure depicts a picture of how the reverse side of the player will look. The two main features here are the belt clip that has to be slid into the belt line or some support and the sliding cover for batteries. The cover slides outward and directions are printed out just above the cover. This side is marked pictorially with the number of batteries that must be used and how they must be inserted.

View 3:

This figure dipicts a picture of the bottom of the device. Two ports are visable. The first is the power port. The second is the USB port. These are both marked with universal symbols.

Issues and Questions Raised in discussing this design

Here are some issues that are raised in the current design:

Issue 1

Problem: All of the interviewees owned some portable player and used CD-players mostly and all of them listed the desire for a portable player to be able to play the music from these CDs. The player currently doesn't offer this feature.

Ideas and Current Dilemma: We debated whether to include a CD player internally in the device. We also debated whether to provide a feature that will allow user to connect to a CD-read device, to help them copy music from their CD to the MP3 player.

Trade-offs: The increased size of the player, and increased complexity of the device, weighed against including a CD player. CD's are copyable from other sources. These seemed to outwieght the added convenience of always having a CD player handy. The addition of a seperate CD recording device seemed excessive and costly. It was decided that the number of computers with CD players is sufficient to allow most of the demographic to copy CD's using the computer.

Issue 2

Problem: Number and Size of buttons

Ideas and Current Dilemma: In the process of trying to make this player simpler to use we designed it so that the functionality for each and every button is clearly demarcated and as independent from other buttons as possible. This raises the issue of how many buttons to add and how to fit them into a compact space.

The users wanted the player to have bigger buttons that were clearly marked and the player to be compact.

Trade-offs:
a) Simplicity of use vs. Too many buttons added - At some point, the line has to be drawn, and we will make assumptions about a required level of smartness on the part of the user. This includes using some buttons for two functions, such as mode switching or ON/OFF, as well as Play/Pause.

b) Space vs. Size of buttons: If the buttons have to be bigger and marked prominently, then the space requirement increases. We proposed to use only a few, large buttons and keep them well separated.

Suggestions: We suggest that the make will be of plastic to minimize the weight. Some buttons will have to be re-used. For example we have shown in figure 1, that the play/pause button will have both functionality- to play and to pause a track. We also split up some buttons to include two functions of the same category - for example increasing and decreasing volume, and switching to AM or FM radio.

Issue 3:
Problem: The size of the LCD and what it displays

Ideas and Current Dilemma. The users want to be able to easily read what is on the display. However, an MP3 player may have many songs and the user would like to easily scroll through them. There is a dilemma with respect to how much information can be displayed to the users while still making it easy to read. One position is that the information that is on the screen should be clearly spaced and in a large type, but limited. The other option is to provide a lot of information, such as a song menu, but reduce the type and readability.

Tradeoffs: LCD Size vs. Information: By providing limited information, we are able to maximize the readability of the device. Too many of our interviewees had problems seeing small print for a substantial menu to be incorporated. A smaller menu may be acceptable, but would require additional menu buttons for limited gain.

Suggestions: We determined that we would list 5 songs. This allows at least some information regarding surrounding songs to be displayed and still maintains the overriding desire to be easily readable. The bottom half of the display, it was determined, would be better used to display more information about the song itself, while the list would be song names only. This allows the font size of the list to be increased even more.

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