Comments on Lost in Translation: IA Challenges in Distributing Digital Audio

peter nelson — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 19:41:19 GMT

Another consideration on this topic is that different genres may imply different browsing strategies. The main organizing concept in classical music is the ‘work’ – i.e., the opus, the piece, e.g., a piano trio, a symphony, a concerto., etc. And the work is subdivided into individual movments, which correspond to tracks. So in classical music there is an extra layer in the hierarchy that doesn’t typically exist in other music.

When I’m browsing my classical music I may go COMPOSER (e.g., Beethoven) > WORK (e.g., “Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125”) > MOVEMENT (“2nd movement – Molto vivace”)

When I’m browsing popular music I go ARTIST (e.g., “Moby”) > SONG (e.g., “South Side”)

But in jazz I might focus on certain classic albums. e.g. ARTIST (“Miles Davis”) > ALBUM (e.g. “Sketches of Spain”) and play the whole thing.

Any good IA for music has to account for different genres having different organizational and searching paradigms.

Jon Ochenas — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:45 GMT

A nit to pick, but I must:

iPod/iTunes expressly does NOT use a queue for playback (setting aside playlists/on the go).

In regular playback situations, the view is the queue – once you start playing a song, playback continues down whatever list of songs was in view when playback was started. That’s why iTunes has the little arrow in the information window to return you to the view that is feeding the current playback.

The iTunes paradigm needs some support on the iPod, thus the addition of the “Now Playing” menu item. However, the Now Playing screen does not replace the arrow widget described above and does not allow the user to see the list of songs that are playing. To see that list they must follow the browse path that kicked off playback in the first place.

This approach differs from many other applications and devices that use a queue as a place where songs must go to be played. After songs are placed in the queue they can be saved as a playlist etc.

I’m still not sure which is the best approach – the time I’ve spent in the lab looking at how users approach these models yields little sense that one is better than the other. Newbies tend to do well with either while more habituated users prefer what they were exposed to first.

In general, it seems to me that the queue system is more powerful but requires some discovery while the WYSIWYH (what you see is what you hear) model is more obvious, but dead ends the user in certain tasks.

Mr. Constantiono is entirely accurate that there is much lurking below the surface that should be more deeply explored. I do have a couple thoughts on the popularity of shuffle mode though:

1) It’s simple and requires very little thought. It also yields unexpected juxtapositions of songs that can be quite delightful.

2) It’s a great way to explore all the songs you “borrowed” from your friend but have no idea what they are or whether you’ll like them.

- Jon

Michael Costantino — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 19:39:22 GMT

I would agree with nearly all that Dan mentions here.

However… I would add to the IA challenges:
A1. How do users find…
A2. How do users know…
>> A3. How do users control…

And to the other challenges:
B1. Limited display size…
B2. Limited metadata…
B3. User’s expectations/experience…
>> B4. Industry non-cooperation and competition

==========
Several articles could be written by combining the A and B lists.

Why do so many people listen in shuffle mode? Are they happy there?

Why are so many iPod users settling for a text-based interface? What other great interfaces have been pushed aside by Apple’s marketing might?

Why are good metadata libraries that are licensed to online stores and services (e.g. Muze, SavageBeast/Pandora, AMG) not available to individuals?

Can user-defined and user-activity tagging be combined with a fixed metadata structure in a way that creates powerful and still easy-to-use navigation?

This is a deep topic. More should be written about it in collaboration with Music Cognitive Psychology folk.

- Mike

Sean — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:15 GMT

“Creating more complex structures depends on having more comprehensive information about the music.”

I have found Gjay(http://gjay.sourceforge.net) to be a nifty generator of complex structures.

-Sean