Blocs Wave is a powerful and beautifully designed iPad and iPhone app for making and recording new music quickly, building up new ideas and real-time loop recording. Blocs Wave is a powerful and beautifully designed iPad and iPhone app for making and recording new music quickly, building up new ideas and real-time loop recording.
I was responsible for the UI and UX. I also contributed to some user testing.
Shows a single row, with arrows to move row up/down. Button on right for deleting/duplicating rows.
Lower section has menu on left (S for sample, Edit and Enhance) and main section on right
Problem: workflow around screen is not unidirectional -- weird to have the menu on left
Explore -- find a sound
Edit -- change the sound
Enhance -- add FX
Row selector shows context but too complex
Problem: Explore, edit and enhance all at the same level -- suggests that changing the sample doesn’t change the edit or enhance data you’ve already put in
But you really would expect to get new warp markers (in edit menu) when selecting a new pad
Which suggests explore is further up the hierarchy than edit or enhance
FX in enhance tab should probably stay on sample change, otherwise you can’t hear what a different
sample sounds like with the same FX
So it seems like there are two types of data at the top: sample & edit, and FX
Explore and Edit can’t be split if the data in Edit changes when you switch sample -- hierarchy should reflect that
Should edit section only be available when there’s a sample loaded?
This design looks at the two-level hierarchy, where edit is within sound
Problem: having two tabs arranged in this way isn’t clear
Which tab layer is more important?
If sound/fx tab was a switch at the top layer, it could do two things:
- change what’s shown on the pads (i.e. pads could show FX settings when in FX view)
- change what’s shown in the main area
Exploring a mode switch in top right
Problem: does the switch suggest that it’s going to permanently change what the pads do, rather than show two types of information?
Exploring a mode switch in top right
Problem: can still enter edit mode when there’s no sample assigned
Can we get rid of the browse/edit tab?
Using the triangle shape to link the pad to the main section
Re-introduced sound/fx butons in main area as it’s potentially clearer
Brought export button into line with pads for symmetry
Trying to emulate tabs on pads; clearer link
Both pads and export button are related to rows; enter a special row-oriented view
Trying again find & edit tabs; might be clearer now due to other layout changes
Play button on pad makes it clear that you can only play the currently selected pad
If assigning a new sample overwrites the edit data, why is it at the same hierarchical as browse?
Furthermore, if assigning a sample is simple, it could be easy to accidentally overwrite edit data
Specific load sample/load slice data buttons to deal with this… ?
Wrong place for volume
Hide edit tab if no sample assigned to pad
When sample selected, browse tab moves to make way for edit tab?
No ‘load slice’ as no user story for this
Starting to look at edit section
Volume for pad moved here, but it’s still not in the right place
Starting to think about recording