Project

Summary and
Prototype Guide

The Project
Musicking is a web app and a community for music learners. It oers its users tools for setting
goals, tracking progress, and building a diverse and supportive community of musickers. These
tools are built around the following core features:

The Musicking Timeline. Learning to perform music is hard, and progress can feel very
slow. The Musicking Timeline gives music learners a way to creatively demonstrate the
time and eort they put into their music, while learning at their own pace. Users can log
practice sessions, and post notes and recordings, encouraging musickers to see the
learning process creative work in its own right.

Virtual Events. This is where musickers can share their work with others and get
feedback. They can seek help and advice at Virtual Workshops, and share recordings
theyre proud of at Virtual Open Mic Nights. Being able to share ones progress with
others is a key motivating factor in music learning - one of the hardest things about
learning without a teacher is that you have no one to hold you accountable or validate
the learning thats taken place. Virtual Events help the Musicking community step in to
ll this role for one another.

The biggest change was the addition of Virtual Events, because I decided I didnt like the idea
of Timelines being the vehicle for getting advice from the community - I wanted feedback to be
actively sought.
Virtual Events were at one point going to fall into four categories, but usability testing
suggested this was the one signicant point of confusion in our navigational taxonomy. We
decided, therefore, to reduce the categories to two, which reect a key dierence: one type of
event invites the exchange of constructive criticism, and one does not. Within these two
categories, users have considerable freedom to dene their event in any way they see t.

The Team
Megans deliverables: Timeline wireframe and mock up, logo, mascot
Cha-neses deliverables: Persona and user narrative, banjo practice video, content
development (banjo practice video highlight is featured in this concept video)
Svetas deliverables: Events page wireframes

The Prototype
The prototype was built in Axure, and can be viewed in your browser using this link:
[Ive removed the link from this public copy, but if youd like to use it to evaluate my work,
please contact me.]
The following user paths are available to explore:

New user sign up. Starting on the home page, try signing up for a Musicking account.
Note that in the prototype, you must follow the orientation tour to the end (you cannot
go back, or end the tour early. Sorry.)

Explore events. Once youve nished your tour of the Timeline, why not check out the
Dashboard? From there, maybe you want to nd out what Virtual Events are all about?

Log a practice. When youre done the Virtual Events tour, go to your Dashboard (notice
that youve magically registered for an event!) Now go back to the Timeline and log a
new practice.

Notes on using the prototype:

1. The sidebar includes the sitemap in one tab, and notes for the current page in the other.
Dont close this sidebar - you may have to reopen the page to get it back.
2. If the page looks a little wonky, try reloading it.
3. By default, you can see little blue icons that tell you that there is an interaction note
associated with this area. Click on the icon to reveal the notes. You can hide the note icons
by toggling the button in the top left-hand corner of the sidebar.
4. Click the button next to it
currently interact with.

to toggle a green glow around all the elements that you can