Goldberg: Observations

All subjects found the visual representations useful.

• Subject 1 explicitly said that, even though she knew very little about music, she found the visuals in the Choosing interface to be helpful in determining whether she might like something.
• Subject 2 got no benefit from the piano rolls but was evidently able to learn a lot about variations just by looking at the written music while using the Music Processor.
• Subject 2 also preferred to look through snippets of written music representing the variations to choosing from a menu of operations in a Macintosh pull-down style.
• Subject 3 found the piano rolls very intuitive but commented that written music would not have been as much help.
• Subjects 1 and 3 said they could rule out some variations they thought they wouldn't like based on the visual representations.

Conclusion: Visual representations should be available for all variations, preferably in a way allowing scanning and comparison (i.e. all visible at once). Multiple kinds of representation should be available, selectable by the user depending on what they find useful. The Music Processor might benefit from showing snippets of music rather than a simple list of operations to perform.