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mood pictures one at a time and asked what type of music they associated
with that picture. Next, the participants were able to use the software
freely for 5-15 minutes while being observed, after which a short, semi-
structured interview studying both hedonic and pragmatic aspects of the
software was conducted. At the end, the users had to rate the quality of a
couple of aspects of the prototype using a seven-point Likert scale (see the
Quality aspects section).
After the interview, participants were able to use an online version of
the software at home or in any other preferred listening context for two to
three weeks. Finally, they had to evaluate the prototype by completing a
questionnaire similar to the one used during the interview. The participants
were also asked to rate how well the mood pictures matched the
recommended music on a seven-point scale.
The user study was arranged as part of a study on six novel music
recommendation applications. As the users were able to test all the
applications at the same time, the amount of time to test one prototype was
limited. On average, the participants tested the mood pictures prototype 3-
4 times during the three weeks.
Each part of the user study was conducted in Finnish. In the following,
we try to translate all terms, questions, and answers from Finnish to
English as closely as possible.
Participants
The participants were selected using convenience sampling from varying
age groups and education levels. The only requirement was that the
participants had to listen to music every now and then. However, most
participants who volunteered for the study were active music listeners.
All the participants were Finnish. 77% (31 participants) were male and
23% (9) female. 8% (3) were 12-17 years old, 12% (5) 18-30 years old,
55% (22) 31-40 years old, and 25% (10) 41-55 years old. The average age
was 35, and all participants from the 12-17 age group were male. 63% of
the participants were university graduates, and the rest were split between
all types of education.
8% were professional and 50% hobby musicians. 50% considered
listening to music to be their hobby. During listening, 20% of the
participants did not usually do anything else but concentrate on the music.
All except two participants listened to music at least once a day, and the
average time per day was 2.1 hours. The most popular genres were pop
(85% of participants liked it), rock (80%), metal (63%), soul, R&B and
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