Preliminary Survey Findings

Our preliminary survey sought to understand the behaviors and preferences of media player users.

We had 77 respondents and approximately the same amount of male and female users.

63% were self-identified expert technology users, 27% were average technology users, and 6% were novice technology users.



A majority of respondents (70%) use a media player a couple times a day and they typically consume media through the computer (95%), smart phones (77%), MP3 Players (43%), and radio (41%).

The graph to the left shows the reasons why people typically use a media player.







 
 A more detailed analysis is provided in our final project proposal.

These results will help to inform our user experience and usability tests in the upcoming weeks!

aVia Demo

Last week our team visited the Videon Central office to see a live demo of the aVia application.

We saw how to select one of the many available media sources on a Google TV so that we can listen to music, play videos, or view photos from other devices directly on the TV.

We also learned how to "fling" media from one device to another. We were impressed with how easy it was to select a movie from the Android phone and "fling" it to the GoogleTV.

This week we submitted our final project proposal, which adds more detail to our draft proposal regarding the survey results, user experience tests, usability study tests, and prototype development and evaluation.

Next our team will be kicking off our user experience tests by asking both expert and novice users to explore the aVia app over a few days and then gather their feedback on the experience. This will help to inform our usability tests and prototype design.

observations "in the wild"

Here are a few photos of our team's observations when looking for when and how people use media players on campus. Most of the users were listening to music or watching videos while they studied or worked in downtown cafes.

There were also a lot of observations of people using media players on the streets. One man even color-coordinated his red headphones to his red shirt and backpack - perhaps this shows a desire to express one's own style and individuality when using technology?

Other media player users were seen at home, in the gym, on buses, and in stores. A more detailed analysis of this will be found in our updated proposal, which we are finalizing this week.

Preliminary Survey

Our team spent this week finalizing our preliminary survey in order to better understand users' preferences and habits when consuming media and using media players. The survey has been open for a little over a day and we already have 50+ responses!

Next we will be working on revising our draft project proposal, gathering data for customer observations, and drafting a more detailed plan for our user experience and usability studies.

User Review Word Clouds

We learned in class that you can use word clouds to quickly assess prevalent terms found within a document or website. So our team collected all of the user reviews for aVia on Android Market and on Amazon to see what users were saying about the aVia app.  Here's what we found using the Wordle word cloud generating website:

Android Market User Reviews:

Amazon User Reviews:

Next we will analyze the user reviews in more depth to better understand any recommendations related to usability or social media.