September 2015 – May
6.3 Focus Group at School A, January 2016 1 Context
The first study to take place in a school was at School A, a state comprehensive secondary
school. The purpose of the study was to evaluate use of Graphick Score by Year 7 students,
Figure 6.7 – SoundWorlds uses the Leap Motion to allow the user to ‘grab’ and ‘move’ 3-dimensional geos, altering their musical parameters. The palm of the hand (large mesh sphere) and five fingers (surrounding smaller mesh spheres) can be seen grabbing a geo here.
Figure 6.8 – The Leap Motion uses infra- red to map hand motions to a XYZ axis
106 i.e. those who had only recently begun secondary school education, and in many cases formal music education. Consent was granted from the school, and sought in advance from the pupils and their legal guardians through a letter distributed by the school a week previously. This also contained information about the study, contact details, possible frequently asked questions, and assurance that data would be stored anonymously. This format was used for all subsequent studies, and all names used are not the real names of the participants.
Following the exhibition at University B, the select mode was removed, with all select functions accessible using the right button of the mouse. The separate mode for drawing lines was also removed; lines could be created by holding the left mouse button and dragging. A default set of VST instruments was also loaded into the instrument menu. In the interest of moving towards a possible 3-dimensional interface, the menu of available geos
was now expanded to include a library of .mod files (Figure 6.9). These files, often used in
3D printing and game design, are 3-dimensional virtual models of various items. A pack of model files available for public domain use were downloaded and incorporated as geos. A possible future development was that these models could be turned and rotated to affect some parameter of the sound source, though this was not yet achieved at this stage.
6.3.2 Method
Five workstations were set up in an otherwise empty classroom of School A. These consisted of laptops running
Graphick Score, with a mouse and set of headphones. Two sessions of 30 minutes each were planned, with five Year 7 students in each session (though the second session had only four participants due to absence). These participants were chosen by the Head of Music at School A, and were a mix of boys and girls with mixed levels of musical ability. As a focus group, I wanted a sample representative of the range of students in the class.
When participants entered the room, the purpose of the session – to develop a programme for music composition – was explained. A short survey was completed by each participant, which asked whether they had any instrumental
training or other musical experience.The purpose of this survey was to gather information
Figure 6.9 – Different geos; simple geometric shapes, complex shapes, 3-dimensional .mod files
107 about the musical background of each participant for comparison of results. The participants had 20 minutes to use the programme, after which followed a brief discussion. This was done as an informal group discussion, as I felt that pupils would be less reticent about presenting their opinions in this setting. Finally, participants were asked to rate how easy the programme
was to use, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being very difficult and 10 being very easy.17
6.3.3 Results
All participants used the canvas window with no visible difficulty, and the menu of graphical geos was also used extensively. This also included the use of the right mouse button to select and drag geos, which appeared to pose no great difficulty. Few other controls were used beyond the selection of different geos. Some participants tried to change the voice in the instrument menu, but this was done by changing the VST rather than switching channels. Similarly, the geo and colour was mostly changed within a single channel rather than selecting a new one. Consequently, most of the results show different geos, some of which have a different colour, but which are almost universally built through channel 1 on the instrument menu.
The mode of interaction observed was very similar for many of the participants; this typically involved ‘filling’ the screen with a variety of geos, clearing it, and then moving on to carefully drawing a line or some other pattern. In the first session, the two girls began this process with their headphones on, while the three boys did not, only putting these on after having drawn on the canvas window to listen to their result. In the second session, more instructions were given as to how the programme worked, with a few functions being
demonstrated to the group. This led to different results in the second session; all participants used the headphones, and moved to new scenes rather than clearing the screen. Also, this led to a different line of questioning. In the first session, with no direction or demonstration, one
participant asked ‘What should we do?’ Participants were also often looking at the screen of
their neighbour, as if looking for confirmation of process. In the second session, with a
demonstration of the programme, participants instead asked how to do specific functions.
This suggested that some demonstration of the working environment encouraged experimentation and engagement.
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108 Results for each session were similar. Participants generally used the programme to draw pictures and create patterns, not paying attention to the ‘sound’ of their results. Alice and Jessica (Figure 6.10; 6.11) both had formal musical training, for clarinet and piano respectively, but were in separate sessions. Both have filled the screen with various geos, and recognisable patterns, such as smiling faces, can be seen. However, as Jessica attended the second session with its more detailed demonstration, she has made more use of different functions, such as geo type and colour.
Figure 6.10 – Alice
109 Other participants produced tidier results, tending to draw a contour and listen back to it. Examples of this are Bill from the first session (Figure 6.12), and Hattie from the second session (Figure 6.13). Neither of these participants had any instrumental training.
Discussion was very much focused on the graphical elements of the programme. Participants wanted to see more geo types, and were particularly eager about the prospect of an emoji-like menu, typical of social media communications. This was suggested by one of the participants:
‘I think it should have more like the smiley face. Like you get on… like Facebook…’
No mention was made of the sound sources used, though the suggestion of a specific sound
for each geo type received a positive response. In response to the question: ‘On a scale of 1 to
10, how easy was the programme to use?’ results were mixed but tended toward the higher end of the scale, indicating that the participants found it fairly easy to interact with the programme.
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Figure 6.13 – Hattie
The results of this study indicate that participants found the interface visually easy to use, and even engaging, but that this did not prompt a mode of use that focused on musical output. This can be seen from the screenshots and observations on mode of use, which mostly involved visual engagement, and the discussion, which focused on the graphical elements. None of the participants used the XY grid within the canvas window, even when shown how to make it visible.
In summary, evidence of engagement with the interface was improved following a demonstration of its functions, but this was mostly focused on the graphical elements. The priorities for development in advance of the next study concerned improving the possibilities for creative musical exploration; the sound sources, and the relationship that exists between interactions with the canvas window and resulting compositional material. I concluded that, where possible, this should utilise the already observed engagement with visual and graphical explorations (painting, drawing, making patterns out of shapes).
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