Demonstration of Design Engineering Thinking and Skills
WeJam hosts sessions using an app called Songreader, where using real instruments, such as keyboards, keytars, or electric drums, players follow custom sheet music on a tablet - featuring coloured bubbles, which correspond to coloured stickers on their instrument. With the easiest setting, one note is played for the duration of one bar of music, but if done so correctly, the remaining notes in that bar will be triggered and played over the speakers.
One of my major early achievements was learning JavaScript, and associated frameworks React and Node, in the first few weeks of my placement as I was to become the sole person responsible for this portion of Songreader’s back-end. I would later also broaden my limited knowledge of HTML and CSS to a similar working standard in order to make UI changes. Through this, I also developed the ability to understand, work with, and improve existing code that integrated with a separate music processing program, having to send and receive messages between the two.
Design Thinking principles were used principally in system testing - conducted in schools with students ages 7 to 14. I would run or help run 20 minute sessions where groups of six would learn to play a song in a 20 minute session. The key criteria for this stage of testing were to establish the system as reliable and well stress-tested, observe and respond appropriately to how students found the WeJam experience, and create a good company image in our interactions with students and staff.
Other Design Engineering skills were important when looking at the bigger picture, and solving problems for issues implemented in programs I was not familiar with. Breaking down observed problems, using techniques such as How Might We’s or even challenging previously made assumptions to find alternative solutions led to system improvements, and consequently user experience improvements.
My first major technical challenge was implementing the ability to change song. What seemed like a small problem turned into a lot of research and proposal for an extra week spent streamlining to back-end of the Songreader system, using methods such as Node modules and asynchronous functions to improve request handling within the system, and provide more sturdy foundations for future, more data-intensive additions to the system.
Another big technical change was through redesigning session initialisation - initially, this was designed for the ease of the person running the session, but it became clear that it would be more advantageous to pivot to focus on user experience. Different types of session have different aims, and require different information collection from users. While some of the differences between the session types were small, changes were made with the foresight for further future divergence between modes.