3.1 | Preliminary User Feedback

3.1.1 Procedures

Fig. 1. A BVI participant creating her personalized melody. 

The initial prototype was demonstrated to a 30-year-old female with visual disability who was a BVI educator with a specialization in the music field. I first introduced the idea and goal of CodeRhythm and explained the function of each block. During this introduction session, I encouraged the participant to pick up each type of block, touch, and interact with it. Then the participant was told to connect Start Block and one of the syllable blocks, which enabled the user to create the first and basic program intuitively.
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After the brief introduction, I picked up one Start Block and two syllable blocks, connecting them with Switch and Loop Block, respectively. As a result, two different simple melodies were created, which introduced the participant how these two functions work in the program. In this process, the participant was told to touch and experience these two sequences of blocks.

​In the next part, I assemble a Start block, five syllable blocks, a Switch block, and a Loop block, to demonstrate a more diverse melody for participants. After experiencing and interacting with the overall effect of blocks, the participant was encouraged to create a personalized melody with assembling any types of blocks. In the end, I interviewed the participant about the usability challenge, the key advantages of the toolkit, and potential improvement in the future.​

3.1.2 Findings

In the experience process, the participant was able to assemble blocks to create a simple melody successfully. Also, the participant could connect blocks easily without much hesitation and exploration. When tracing the block sequence by touching, the participant was able to distinguish the different characteristics of each type of block clearly.

In the interview session, the participant commented that the experience was fun and inviting. Notably, the participant thought the audio feedback, which matched the tactile pattern on the syllable blocks, was surprising and helpful. Regarding the connection with magnet and conductive tape, the participant appraised that it was beneficial and eliminated the exploration time. Also, the participant noted that we could also utilize the toolkit to help BVI students understand electric literacy since the connection was one of the significant parts of electric, and our method of using magnet and conductive tape performed well in decreasing the connection difficulties. For improvement of connection, the participant suggested that we can make the shape more irregular such that the connection surface can be further distinguishable from other sides of the cube.

​The participant mentioned that mastering all of the concepts and functions and manipulating them in a short time was challenging and difficult, which required high-level cognitive ability. Regarding this challenge, the participant suggested that it was better to design a well-structured and detailed curriculum and applied it to a workshop of multiple sessions. For the improvement of expressiveness, the participant suggested that we can add some more diverse and personalized tunes to provide a more compelling and exciting experience. Regarding the teaching goal of CodeRhythm, the participant noted that it was useful and inviting to learn the basic and simple concept, but not proper enough for learning the advanced and traditional computational literacy.