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Contextual Inquiry


Introduction 👋🏻

After conducting heuristic evaluation and usability testing, I realized that I needed to know more about the behavior, background, and user experiences of my target audience.

Step 1. Specify the design challenge 💭

What is the main activity your project would support for the users?

What is the basic need/goal involved for that activity?

What are the traditional/current solution(s) to satisfy the needs?

What are the limitation(s) that possibly would be improved?

Step 2. Target users 👤

What are the characteristics of users?

In which context would the users do that activity?

What would the users usually do in order to complete that activity?

Step 3. Research Methods 🧪

I decided to use interview, participatory interaction of the user and observation as my primary research methods.

For the interview and observation session, I followed a script that had the following structure:

  1. Background questions
  2. Observing user’s music learning activities
  3. Follow-up questions

I had my subject perform three activities:

Activity 1 (general) Activity 2 (music learning) Activity 3 (music learning)
A general activity with a desire to work on a skill Learning/brushing up on an instrument Learning a song on an instrument of choice

The first activity was conducted on the subject’s phone. The second and third activities were conducted in the subject’s own home, by a piano, with a phone in hand. I used Zoom to record the audio of the interview and the laptop camera to observe. However, for privacy reasons, the video of the session will be kept confidential. Because of schedule conflicts, I was unable to come to their home in-person, so we opted for a remote Zoom call. Below is a picture of the home environment.


home setup

Step 4. Observation/Interview Guide 📒

Step 5. Conducting the Research 🔬

Insights 💡

  1. Having a forum (like Reddit) where people can share knowledge is helpful

    Sometimes, I think I would read on Reddit, I don’t know the specific group but they typically tell you how, when I had trouble finding my fingering on my own for a music, it would be like, I turn to Reddit, or like, the most like, optimal way to play a specific song, simply because I’d say, like, the chord progression is too big for your hand, and they’d tell you a more efficient or optimal way, if you have smaller hands, to play specific music.

    My subject mentioned forums and the use of Reddit a lot, which makes me think that the sharing of knowledge is really important when learning anything, and specifically musical instrument learning. I would like my final project to have a forum feature where communication is prevalent.

  2. Would be helpful to have a feature to digitally write on sheet music, and an automatic scroll

    (You brought up a good point about writing on your sheet music. When you’re learning your song earlier on Musescore, you were not able to particularly write on that sheet music, right? Do you think that would be a helpful thing?) I think that would be an extremely helpful thing to have when you’re learning your songs. Yes. Just so like, you will probably forget when you’re playing through the song again. And it’ll take longer for you to really integrate that into your memory.

    He mentioned that Musescore is frustrating to use when viewing music on your phone because you would have to scroll for yourself and it messes with the rhythm and learning process. These are features he would like to see when using a sheet music viewing app digitally on a smaller device.

  3. Not all people have connections to teachers and easy access to materials

    I came across my piano teacher through connections, and I think that often times people don’t have that same connection with people, so I think what I had was pretty rare. As it is not someone who posts themselves online. It’s just like, you know this person and you keep referring people to that said person... Yes. I think that my piano teacher provided me with a lot of things that I did not have to think about myself, and I think that was pretty nice.

    He mentioned that most of his piano education was provided by his piano teacher that was found through connections. I want to focus on providing an equal amount of support for the users of my project that could be found from a personal teacher.

Step 6. Reflection and Documentation ✍🏻

The interview went well and lasted about an hour and fifteen minutes. My subject was definitely a part of my target audience and offered a lot of insight regarding music learning and the features that would enhance his experience with music learning. I especially learned a lot of insight about Musescore and some features he would change on the website. However, the biggest problem was having the interview and observation go smoothly, as we Zoom called instead of having me visit his place in person. His laptop died in the middle of the participatory observation, which was a technical difficulty I did not foresee happening, which would have interrupted the flow of things. Additionally, my roommate was being inconsiderate and was speaking loudly on the phone in the background, and I did not have the heart to say that I was recording an important meeting. Next time, I will make sure that the environment is quiet and without distractions. I would also try to have it in person, as the natural flow of a conversation and events would be better, and I would be able to see the subject's actions in real-time, in front of me.