Audio / Video player usability test

Ryan West, a student employee and front-end developer in the Digtial Library Initiatives department (DLI), is developing a custom audio / video player for our digital collections. The player has features -- including download, captions, playback speed, and the visualization of audio waveform data (see picture below) -- that are different than in common video players such as YouTube. DLI staff initiated usability tests to find out how intuitive and/or learnable these features will be to users.

The audio / video player is being developed to address particular challenges of working with archival audio and video. Some files in our collections have not been edited to remove silent parts. The audio waveform visualizer (see picture below) is intended to help users see and skip those kinds of pauses.

WHAT WORKED WELL

Usability test participants were able to use all features. The features that caused minor confusion proved learnable after a few seconds. 

ISSUES

1. When using the audio waveform visualizer, participants looked for a YouTube-like "seek bar" at the bottom of the interface (see picture below). When they did not find it (because it is not there), they were able, after a pause and a little confusion, to move the mouse to the center of the interface where the functionality lies.
   
   
    
2. Participants looked for a feature that does not exist, the ability to skip backward or forward a few seconds.
3. Participants expected immediate results upon clicking "download."
4. After clicking "download" in Chrome, the resulting download bar at the bottom of the browser intereferes with the audio / video player control buttons.

RECOMMENDATIONS AND CHANGES

1. In response to participants looking for a YouTube-like "seek bar" in the audio waveform visualizer, West made the cursor change when hovering over the waveform and changed the background color to contrast with the control bar. We recommend the addition of a vertical line to show users where they are, and time markers.
2. We recommend adding the ability to skip backward or forward a few seconds.
3. In response to participants' expectation of immediate results upon clicking "download," we recommend enabling that functionality when there is only one file available download. When there are multiple files, leave the interaction as it is.
4. In response to the problem of the Chrome download bar, West will submit an issue to the Git repo for Videojs-wavesurfer, the Video.js plugin used in the player.