DSCI532-peer-review

Open an issue with the name of your group and app Use this template: FEEDBACK FROM GROUP 1

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Name of the app: Spotify Explorer
Link to the repo in milestone2: https://github.com/UBC-MDS/spotify-explorer-py/tree/v0.2.0
Link to the proposal.md file where it is the description of the persona and scenario: https://github.com/UBC-MDS/spotify-explorer-py/blob/main/proposal.md

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Persona Provide 3 pieces of constructive feedback that could help the app to be better suited to the scenario it was designed for

It would be useful to know what the red line in “Artists Popularity Record” means - whether it is the mean, median or some other metric. It would also be useful to have a tooltip for this red line.
For a “Top Artist by Genre”, it would be useful to adjust this metric by setting a minimum for the number of tracks per genre by an artist to qualify. For example, KAROL G is the top artist both in edm and pop, with a score of 98, but that score is derived from 1 song for each genre.
The data needs to be more carefully filtered as there are duplicate tracks. For example, based on the Artist's popularity record chart, there are 123 records but the number of unique observations for “The Chainsmokers” is ~60.

Provide 3 pieces of constructive feedback that could help the app to be better suited to the user(persona) it was designed for

It would be useful to have more space between the Artist Genre and Artist Name dropdown menus, so that it is easier for the user to recognize that the first dropdown is for the top chart, while the second dropdown is for the bottom two charts.
As a user (based on the persona), it is a bit hard for me to assess which music feature is more important for which genre of music as I can only look at them one at a time in the “Song Characteristics” tab. Instead, one dropdown for the music genre with side-by-side boxplots for each music feature would be more useful. This can be accomplished by faceting.
For the “Song characteristics distribution between two popularity classes”, it would be helpful to clearly specify the threshold set for “Popular” versus “Not-Popular”, both on the chart itself and the README.

Frontend / layout Is the text (plot labels / titles / subtitles) easy to read?

Yes, the plot labels, titles, and subtitles are easy to read. That said, the title for “Song characteristics distribution between two popularity classes” could be reduced a bit so that it fits within the dimensions of the chart itself (i.e. length).

Are the plots selected appropriated for the data? Can you think of other alternatives or improvements for the plots regarding interactivity/reactivity or plot selection?

Yes, the plots selected are appropriate for the question at hand. In terms of interactivity, we have two suggestions: (i) to reduce the length of some of the charts so that they fit on one screen, not requiring scrolling to see the extreme end values, and (ii) adjust the labels for the x axis of the “Artist's Popularity Over Time” so that the bounds across years are more clear (as a suggestion, make them vertical rather than horizontal).

Was the dashboard organized in a way that was easy to read (columns / rows) or you would suggest a change in this sense?

Yes, the dashboard was extremely well organized which made it easy to read, barring the suggestion made above for the labels of x axis of the “Artist's Popularity Over Time”.

Would you prefer including tabs / navbars to improve the navigation or you think it is better to visualize everything in one screen by the nature of the content?

The current number of tabs / navbars are well designed in terms of navigation across the dashboard components. The only recommendation would be to consider faceting the Song characteristics distribution between two popularity classes by music features instead of the current drop down for the same, but retain the music genre dropdown.

Are the plots or other images described properly for the persona described?

It would be good to mention the meaning of the scale on which popularity is measured under the Artists/Genre tab (even if it is a footnote). This is more critical for music features for which a user may not be familiar with what the values mean.

Backend Are the options that you can select in the widgets working fine or have you found some cases where it is not working?

All the options that can be selected in the widgets are working well.

If there are interactive plots: are the labels clear and easy to understand?

For nearly all plots, the labels are clear and easy to understand. One recommendation for the tooltip of “Artist's Popularity Over Time” is to add the Album name.

Documentation Was the documentation easy to understand from the README.md how to use the app? How could the documentation be improved?

The documentation is easy to understand, kudos to the team. One recommendation is to include a table of contents to the README.md.

Was the app intuitive to use without reading the documentation? What information could be good to include?

Yes, the app was very intuitive to use without reading the documentation. It would make sense to push the Artist Genre dropdown a bit lower, so that it is even more intuitive that it relates to the bottom two charts.

Indicate something you would like to include in your own app after reviewing this one

We think that including graph interactions across two variables such as a scatter plot, or histogram would be a great idea. Since users of our own app want to obtain insights about changes in world trends, visualizing variables together and seeing interconnections would make sense.

UBC-MDS / DSCI532-peer-review

spotify-explorer-py - Group 2 #15

DSCI532-peer-review

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DSCI532-peer-review

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