Results

 

Of the nearly 100 individuals who tested this system, the vast majority found that playing with it felt like working with another person. Discussions of how the system compared to another person nearly always prompted musicians to talk about their frustrations of working with other musicians, but also how they never feel comfortable criticizing other human players. For example, in the midst of his criticisms of the system, “Torsten,” a bassist in Berlin, noted that all of what he had to say about the system applied to other people. Still, he never felt like it was his right to tell them what he really thinks about working with them:

​

"I wish I could tell other people things like this!"

​

Similarly, for “Jack,” a vocalist in California, the system reminded him of how

​

"guitarists have this disease where they’re

try’na like shred all the time."

​

However, not all musicians found that the system was like a human player who was too full of ideas or too aggressive. For example, “Sascha,” a clarinetist in Berlin, complained of just the opposite, feeling that the system lacked the kind of assertive personality he liked in some human players. When the system would pause to listen to the other player (like many human musicians do), it reminded him of 

​

"somebody who stops because he

doesn’t really know what to do next."

​

Implications

 

The initial purpose of testing this system was to assess whether it does what it was designed to do: give human improvising musicians the feeling of working with another person. However, because the system is supposed to behave like a person, evaluations of the system nearly always turned into evaluations of other people.

 

Just like anywhere else, testing this system is a useful way of brainstorming new design approaches or refinements. At the same time, the people I tested this system were just as interested in a redesign of this system as they were in a redesign of their own human relationships with other people in everyday interactions. Thus it would be foolish to limit the purpose of “usability testing” to just trying to refine system design: how can we use UX research as a way of improving or at least better understanding human processes?

 

For improvisers, I have repurposed the “usability testing” of this system as a way of getting musicians to talk about what they really want other players to do with a level of frankness they do not feel entitled to otherwise. For example, this has often taken the form of workshops like these, in which improvisers talk about the system as a way of talking about issues in their everyday working practices that they don’t otherwise discuss:

​