I think we need to look at some other pieces which aim to teach the user something. I might as well start with the obvious and type in "Learn Guitar" into Google. The first hit that comes up is "http://www.abclearnguitar.com/". This website claims it is for beginners, so this would be a good place to start my research. Time to see how they have structured this. On first impressions it looks pretty standard. Below is a screen shot of the homepage.
If we look at the page, it looms pretty boring to be honest, there seems to be about 20 links down the side which probably should have been reduced to fewer to make it look better and reduce the user having to remember where each link is in the list. As you can see from the image above the graphics are minimal and this website seems to focus more on the fact of teaching rather than getting the users attention with a crisp looking website. Lets take a look at the "Free Lessons" section of this website.
The above image is for the "Free Lessons" section. Again we can see a very boring and standard way of laying this out. Each tutorial has a link in bold and a little explanation of each. The explanations are good but the design and creativity of this website is minimal. Lets take a look at one of these options to see how they have displayed their information.
This was the page I was taken to when I clicked "Introducing the Fretboard". This page follows the layout and design of the rest of the website but now we are faced with some information that can finally get us learning. On first impressions this page seems well structured, each section is separated into smaller chunks so it is easier for the user to digest. But if we look at the information shown, it is pretty technical, especially for a beginner, and it seems to bombard the user with information and terminology. For a beginner, this is seems like too much information. Another point which I have not picked up on yet is the fact that the majority of this website is teaching using text. Learning a guitar is meant to be fun and learning by reading page after page of text is not going to help the user. Another point is that many people have probably tried to dive right in to learning this but without knowing the terms they use, it would be pretty hard and that leaves a high risk of boredom and frustration, eventually leading to the user getting bored and doing something else. This is something we are trying to avoid in our project, terminology is important in our project so we need to make sure the user looks at it.
Lets take a look at the "Video Lessons" section as this is more like what we are planning to do.
This is more like it, teaching using visual aides. There is only a sample on here of the video tutorials because you have to sign up for membership to get access to the full library. I have just watched the sample video and there are a few points to pick up on. Firstly these video tutorials seem to want to cater for all skill levels which I'm not sure it can do really. The lessons seem to be in order and someone who is not a beginner will have to skip through some of the lessons, potentially missing information. Secondly, everything is presented well and clearly but the guy teaching is probably more aimed at the older learner. The language he uses is quite formal and he doesnt really look like hes relaxed. This highlights some of the points about our project. As we have stated in the brief, we want to aim our learning platform at teenagers who are beginners. Although we can probably take some tips from this video, we will be coming up with something very different. There needs to be information and visuals that the users can relate to and a forty something man talking very formally will make it seem like another teacher-student relationship and that is NOT what we want. We want a platform where the users can feel like they are learning in a relaxed environment but still keep their attention.
If we look at the page, it looms pretty boring to be honest, there seems to be about 20 links down the side which probably should have been reduced to fewer to make it look better and reduce the user having to remember where each link is in the list. As you can see from the image above the graphics are minimal and this website seems to focus more on the fact of teaching rather than getting the users attention with a crisp looking website. Lets take a look at the "Free Lessons" section of this website.
The above image is for the "Free Lessons" section. Again we can see a very boring and standard way of laying this out. Each tutorial has a link in bold and a little explanation of each. The explanations are good but the design and creativity of this website is minimal. Lets take a look at one of these options to see how they have displayed their information.
This was the page I was taken to when I clicked "Introducing the Fretboard". This page follows the layout and design of the rest of the website but now we are faced with some information that can finally get us learning. On first impressions this page seems well structured, each section is separated into smaller chunks so it is easier for the user to digest. But if we look at the information shown, it is pretty technical, especially for a beginner, and it seems to bombard the user with information and terminology. For a beginner, this is seems like too much information. Another point which I have not picked up on yet is the fact that the majority of this website is teaching using text. Learning a guitar is meant to be fun and learning by reading page after page of text is not going to help the user. Another point is that many people have probably tried to dive right in to learning this but without knowing the terms they use, it would be pretty hard and that leaves a high risk of boredom and frustration, eventually leading to the user getting bored and doing something else. This is something we are trying to avoid in our project, terminology is important in our project so we need to make sure the user looks at it.
Lets take a look at the "Video Lessons" section as this is more like what we are planning to do.
This is more like it, teaching using visual aides. There is only a sample on here of the video tutorials because you have to sign up for membership to get access to the full library. I have just watched the sample video and there are a few points to pick up on. Firstly these video tutorials seem to want to cater for all skill levels which I'm not sure it can do really. The lessons seem to be in order and someone who is not a beginner will have to skip through some of the lessons, potentially missing information. Secondly, everything is presented well and clearly but the guy teaching is probably more aimed at the older learner. The language he uses is quite formal and he doesnt really look like hes relaxed. This highlights some of the points about our project. As we have stated in the brief, we want to aim our learning platform at teenagers who are beginners. Although we can probably take some tips from this video, we will be coming up with something very different. There needs to be information and visuals that the users can relate to and a forty something man talking very formally will make it seem like another teacher-student relationship and that is NOT what we want. We want a platform where the users can feel like they are learning in a relaxed environment but still keep their attention.
