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The ear trainer is very cool. I think it might benefit from a simpler interface, and/or making it more obvious where I should look first. I wasn't paying much

The ear trainer is very cool. I think it might benefit from a simpler interface, and/or making it more obvious where I should look first. I wasn't paying much attention when I first checked it out and I thought I was supposed to hit the piano keys to answer the questions. Then I read that I could hit Replay, but I didn't see the Replay button, so I just hit Play. This changed the interval, which I thought was the intended behavior and didn't like that. Then later I saw there's a Repeat button, and then I saw the song answer choices. If I were you, I'd do something like: -Make the Song Answer Choice buttons bigger and/or brighter. -Bring the Play and Repeat buttons closer to the answer choices and the piano. -Change the instruction to click "Replay" to be consistent with the word "Repeat" (or change "Repeat" to "Replay"). -Hide the statistics, songs and other buttons from the main interface; instead, have them accessible with Show/Hide buttons or tabs. I know there's a tutorial video, but I think you could still alter the interface to make it easier for people who don't want to watch videos (for example: me. I'm on a relatively slow connection right now and YouTube videos take ages to buffer.). You might also like to grab random people, put them in front of it, and watch what they do, see what confuses them, etc. I think it could be really successful! Maybe post it to Hacker News separately as a "review my app" kind of post.

jimmyrcom 17y ago
Thanks for the thorough feedback and correction for repeat. I do plan to make a simplified version eventually but for now I'm still adding features and trying to document the most recent ones. For now there's video tutorials there that guide through the basics of using the ear trainer and further instructions on the help page. There's a few things that are counter intuitive but are far more efficient that way. For example when you click the wrong answer the correct associated song starts playing. Clicking star wars and having it play here comes the bride might seem confusing but it's necessary for improving the song associating with the correct interval. Also automatically playing a new interval when you're correct is confusing at first but the more clicks saved the more efficient training can be. I can't guarantee anything if they don't watch the tutorial or read the help page for now. Making it beginner foolproof would be great but not if older users have to make 5 - 10 clicks when starting up to get it back to the most efficient settings. I tried a version with elements hidden but in the end it's better just make another version and call the current one the 'advanced version'. The song buttons are packed because they're dynamic in length. The songs can be named anything in the song editor. Also if you select all chords or scales in the first dropdown it already overflows the expected area. There can be a lot of answer choices. Thanks again for the detailed comment, It'll try and reciprocate my time if I notice somewhere I can or if you tell me something you want feedback on.

jimmyrcom 17y ago

Thanks for the thorough feedback and correction for repeat. I do plan to make a simplified version eventually but for now I'm still adding features and trying to document the most recent ones. For now there's video tutorials there that guide through the basics of using the ear trainer and further instructions on the help page. There's a few things that are counter intuitive but are far more efficient that way. For example when you click the wrong answer the correct associated song starts playing. Clicking star wars and having it play here comes the bride might seem confusing but it's necessary for improving the song associating with the correct interval. Also automatically playing a new interval when you're correct is confusing at first but the more clicks saved the more efficient training can be. I can't guarantee anything if they don't watch the tutorial or read the help page for now. Making it beginner foolproof would be great but not if older users have to make 5 - 10 clicks when starting up to get it back to the most efficient settings. I tried a version with elements hidden but in the end it's better just make another version and call the current one the 'advanced version'. The song buttons are packed because they're dynamic in length. The songs can be named anything in the song editor. Also if you select all chords or scales in the first dropdown it already overflows the expected area. There can be a lot of answer choices. Thanks again for the detailed comment, It'll try and reciprocate my time if I notice somewhere I can or if you tell me something you want feedback on.