Grand Challenge 2015: User Experience with JDISC
Contents
Purpose
Holistic, user-centered evaluation of the user experience in interacting with complete, user-facing music information retrieval (MIR) systems.
Goals
- To inspire the development of complete MIR systems.
- To promote the notion of user experience as a first-class research objective in the MIR community.
Dataset
- simple text description including basic statistics (Yun)
Detailed Description of the Schema
The followings are brief descriptions for each of the 19 tables in the dataset (table names in alphabetic order):
- composition: Compositions, which may be recorded as tracks at sessions.
- composition_composer: Associations between compositions and their composers.
- composition_lyricist: Associations between compositions and their lyricists.
- composition_title: Alternative titles for compositions.
- issue: Releases or issues of tracks e.g. as albums.
- issue_leader: Associations between releases and their leaders.
- issue_overdub_people: Associations between overdubbed releases and people working on them.
- issue_track: Associations between releases and the included tracks.
- person: People associated with musical recordings, including musicians and composers.
- person_ethnicity: Association of people with ethnic descriptions.
- person_session_skill: Correlation between people, sessions, and skills or instruments.
- person_skill: Correlation between people and primary skills or instruments.
- person_track_skill: Variation from sessions in correlation between people, tracks, and skills or instruments.
- session: Recording sessions, at which one or more musicians produced one or more tracks.
- session_leader: Associations between sessions and their leader(s).
- skill: Skills associated with musical recordings, including instruments played, conducting, composing.
- track: Tracks laid down at recording sessions by musicians.
- track_composition: Associations between tracks and compositions.
- track_soloist: Associations between tracks and soloists.
More details about each table is shown as below:
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| id | auto_increment |
| title | Human-readable primary title for this composition |
| jdisc_nid | Legacy JDISC node ID for this composition |
| jdisc_vid | Legacy JDISC version ID for this composition |
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| composition | Reference to the composition composed by this person |
| composer | Reference to a person who composed this composition |
| order_key | Ordering of this composer, relative to this composition |
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| composition | Reference to the composition with lyrics by this person |
| lyricist | Reference to a person who wrote lyrics for this composition |
| order_key | Ordering of this lyricist, relative to this composition |
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| id | auto_increment |
| composition | Reference to the composition for which this is an alternative title |
| title | Alternative title for this composition |
| order_key | Ordering of the titles relative to the composition |
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| id | auto_increment |
| name | Human-readable title for this release |
| alternate_leader | Reference to the alternate leader on this release |
| label_name | Name of the issuing label |
| catalog_number | Catalog number given to this release by the label or company |
| date | Date of this release |
| format | Physical medium of this release (LP, CD, etc.) |
| num_channels | Number of audio channels used for this release |
| length | Textual representation of the playing time of this release |
| status | Status of this release (original, reissue, etc.) |
| producer | Reference to the person who produced this release |
| master_engineer | Reference to the person who mastered this release |
| reissue_producer | Reference to the person who produced this reissued release, if applicable |
| reissue_engineer | Reference to the person who engineered this reissued release, if applicable |
| remaster | Indicates that this release was remastered |
| remaster_engineer | Reference to the person who engineered the remastering process, if applicable |
| remix | Indicates that this release is a remix |
| remix_engineer | Reference to the person who engineered the remixing process, if applicable |
| overdub | Indicates that this release has tracks combined (overdubbed) from multiple sessions |
| method_notes | Free text notes on the post-production editing process for this release |
| editing_facility | Name of the facility where this release was edited |
| liner_notes_author | Reference to the person who wrote the notes for this release |
| language | Language of the text associated with this release (e.g., liner notes) |
| cover_artist | Reference to the person who created art for the release cover, if any |
| design_supervisor | Reference to the person who supervised the design of this release |
| photographer | Reference to the person who took photographs included in this release |
| release_details_value | Free text description of the release |
| release_details_format | 1: filtered HTML; 2: raw HTML; 3: PHP code(!) |
| sources | Free text listing of sources for information about this release |
| jdisc_nid | Legacy JDISC node ID for this release |
| jdisc_vid | Legacy JDISC version ID for this release |
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| issue | Reference to the release being led |
| person | Reference to the person leading the release |
| order_key | Ordering of the leaders relative to the release |
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| issue | Reference to the release being overdubbed |
| person | Reference to the person working on the overdubbing |
| order_key | Ordering of the people relative to the release |
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| issue | Reference to the release on which this track appears |
| track | Reference to the track appearing on this release |
| order_key | Ordering of the tracks relative to the release |
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| id | auto_increment |
| name | Best-known English name for this person |
| name_first | First or given name for this person |
| name_last | Last or family name for this person |
| alternate_name | Alternative name (usu. birth name) for this person |
| gender | Textual represenation of person’s gender |
| birth_date_earliest | Earliest possible date of person’s birth |
| birth_date_latest | Last possible date of person’s birth |
| birth_place | Textual representation of place of person’s birth, if known |
| region_origin | Textual representation of person’s region of origin, if known |
| jdisc_nid | Legacy JDISC node ID for this skill |
| jdisc_vid | Legacy JDISC version ID for this skill |
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| id | auto_increment |
| person | Reference to the person being described |
| ethnicity | Textual description of the person’s ethnicity |
| order_key | Ordering of ethnicities relative to the person |
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| person | Reference to the person playing in this session |
| session | Reference to the session performed in by this person |
| skill | Reference to the skill performed by this person in this session |
| order_key | Ordering of the people relative to the session |
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| person | Reference to the person with this skill |
| skill | Reference to the skill held by this person |
| order_key | Ordering of the skills relative to the person |
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| person | Reference to the person playing (or not) on this track |
| track | Reference to the track performed on (or not) by this person |
| skill | Reference to the skill performed, or absence thereof, by this person in on this track |
| order_key | Ordering of the people relative to the track |
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| id | auto_increment |
| name | Human-readable label for the session |
| venue_type | Type of venue where this session took place |
| venue_name | Name of the venue |
| venue_location | Location of the venue |
| label_name | Name of the record label recording this session |
| ensemble_size | Name of the size of the ensemble (trio, quartet, etc.) |
| company_name | Name of the company making the recording |
| parent_company_name | Name of the corporate parent of the recording company |
| producer | Reference to the person who produced the session |
| engineer | Reference to the person who was engineer for the session |
| date_earliest | Earliest possible date of the session |
| date_latest | Last possible date of the session |
| date_precision | Date certainty (as single character, y, m, or d) |
| session_details_value | Free text description of the session |
| session_details_format | 1: filtered HTML; 2: raw HTML; 3: PHP code(!) |
| sources | Free text listing of sources for information about this recording |
| jdisc_nid | Legacy JDISC node ID for this session |
| jdisc_vid | Legacy JDISC version ID for this session |
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| session | Reference to the session being led |
| person | Reference to the person leading the session |
| order_key | Ordering of the leaders relative to the session |
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| id | auto_increment |
| name | English label for this skill or instrument |
| jdisc_nid | Legacy JDISC node ID for this skill |
| jdisc_vid | Legacy JDISC version ID for this skill |
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| id | auto_increment |
| name | Human-readable title for the track |
| session | Reference to the session in which this track was recorded, if known |
| order_key | Ordering of the track relative to the session, if known |
| length | Textual representation of track length, mm:ss |
| matrix_number | Track identification code used by recording company |
| production_status | Textual representation of usage of track (master, alternate, etc.) |
| release_number | Textual representation of track usage on a release, possibly redundant with reified release information |
| splicing | Indicates if track was spliced with another recorded track for release |
| jdisc_nid | Legacy JDISC node ID for this track |
| jdisc_vid | Legacy JDISC version ID for this track |
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| track | Reference to the track as which this composition was recorded |
| composition | Reference to the composition recorded as this track |
| order_key | Ordering of the compositions relative to the track |
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| track | Reference to the track on which this person had a solo |
| soloist | Reference to the person who had a solo on this track |
| order_key | Ordering of the soloists relative to the track |
- visualization of the schema (ER diagram) (Chris)
Download the Dataset
- Use the linked MySQL script to download
- user agreement signed during download?
Participating Systems
Unlike conventional MIREX tasks, participants are not asked to submit their systems. Instead, the systems will be hosted by their developers. All participating systems need to be constructed as websites accessible to users through normal web browsers. Participating teams will submit the URLs to their systems to the GC15UX team.
To ensure a consistent experience, evaluators will see participating systems in fixed size window: 1024x768. Please test your system for this screen size.
See the #Evaluation Webforms below for a better understanding of our E6K-inpsired evaluation system design.
Potential Participants
Please put your names and email contacts in the following table. It is encouraged that you give your team a cool name!
| (Cool) Team Name | Name(s) | Email(s) |
|---|---|---|
Evaluation
As written in the name of the Grand Challenge, the evaluation will be user-centered. All systems will be used by a number of human evaluators and be rated by them on several most important criteria in evaluating user experience.
Criteria
Note that the evaluation criteria or its descriptions may be slightly changed in the months leading up to the submission deadline, as we test it and work to improve it.
Given the GC15UX is all about how users perceive their experiences of the systems, we intend to capture the user perceptions in a minimally intrusive manner and not to burden the users/evaluators with too many questions or required data inputs. The following criteria are grounded on the literature of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and User Experience (UX), with a careful consideration on striking a balance between being comprehensive and minimizing evaluators' cognitive load.
Evaluators will rate systems on the following criteria:
- Overall satisfaction: How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the system?
Very unsatisfactory / Unsatisfactory / Slightly unsatisfactory / Neutral / Slightly satisfactory / Satisfactory / Very satisfactory
- Aesthetics: How would you rate the visual attractiveness of the system?
Very Poor / Poor / Slightly Poor / Neutral / Slightly Good / Good / Excellent
- Ease of use: How easy was it to figure out how to use the system?
Very difficult / Difficult / Slightly difficult / Neutral / Slightly easy / Easy / Very easy
- Clarity: How well does the system communicate what is going on?
Very Poor / Poor / Slightly Poor / Neutral / Slightly Good / Good / Excellent
- Affordances: How well does the system allow you to perform what you want to do?
Very Poor / Poor / Slightly Poor / Neutral / Slightly Good / Good / Excellent
- Performance: Does the system work efficiently and without bugs/glitches?
Very Poor / Poor / Slightly Poor / Neutral / Slightly Good / Good / Excellent
- Open Text Feedback: An open-ended question is provided for evaluators to give feedback if they wish to do so.
Evaluators
Evaluators will be users aged 18 and above. For this round, evaluators will be drawn primarily from the MIR community through solicitations via the ISMIR-community mailing list. The #Evaluation Webforms developed by the GC15UX team will ensure all participating systems will get equal number of evaluators.
Tasks for Evaluators
To motivate the evaluators, a defined yet open task is given to the evaluators:
You need to put together a playlist for a particular event (e.g., dinner party at your house, workout session). Try to use the assigned system to make playlists for at least a couple of different events.
The task is to ensure that evaluators have a (more or less) consistent goal when they interact with the systems. The goal is flexible and authentic to the evaluators' purposes ("music for their own situation"). As the task is not too specific, evaluators can potentially look for a wide range of music in terms of genre, mood and other aspects. This allows great flexibility and virtually unlimited possibility in system or service design.
Another important consideration in designing the task is the music collection available for this GC15UX: the Jamando collection. Jamando music is not well-known to most users/evaluators, whereas many more commonly seen music information tasks are more or less influenced by users' familiarity to the songs and song popularity. Through this task of "finding (copyright-free) background music for a self-made video", we strive to minimize the need of looking for familiar or popular music.
Evaluation Results
Statistics of the scores given by all evaluators will be reported: mean, average deviation. Meaningful text comments from the evaluators will also be reported.
Evaluation Webforms
Graders can take as many assignments as they wish in the My Assignments page. They are allowed to go back to the evaluation page anytime by clicking the thumbnail of the submission.
To facilitate the evaluators and minimize their burden, the GC15UX team will provide a set of evaluation forms which wrap around the participating systems. As shown in the following image, the evaluation webforms are for scoring the participating systems, with their client interfaces embedded within an iframe in the left side of the webform.
Organization
Important Dates
This year GC15UX:JDISC adopts the two-phase model with two evaluations. The first phase will end by the ISMIR conference and we will disclose preliminary results at the conference. Then, phase II will start. Participating developers can continue improving their systems based on the feedback from the first phase and another round of evaluation will be conducted in February. We believe that this model serves the developers well since it is in accordance with the iterative nature of user-centered design. In this way, the developers will also have enough time to develop their complete MIR systems.
- July ?: announce the GC15UX:JDISC
- Sep. 28st: the first deadline for system submission
- Feb. 28st: the second deadline for system submission
What to Submit
A URL to the participanting system.
Contacts
The GC15UX team consists of:
- J. Stephen Downie, University of Illinois (MIREX director)
- Xiao Hu, University of Hong Kong (ISMIR2014 co-chair)
- Jin Ha Lee, University of Washington (ISMIR2014 program co-chair)
- Yi-Hsuan (Eric) Yang, Academic Sinica, Taiwan (ISMIR2014 program co-chair)
- David Bainbridge, Waikato University, New Zealand
- Christopher R. Maden, University of Illinois
- Kahyun Choi, University of Illinois
- Peter Organisciak, University of Illinois
- Yun Hao, University of Illinois
Inquiries, suggestions, questions, comments are all highly welcome! Please contact Prof. Downie [1] or anyone in the team.
