iWhat?

To start an iBook was a very new and thrilling idea to me! First-time-user alert...

Me when I first opened iBooks Author:

Me after figured it out:

A program which I had never used was super fun check out and explore its functions to see how I could bring my vision to life. It sure was confusing at first, but pressing random buttons and asking youtube a couple questions helped me learn about its features in more depth. Particularly as we had discussed iBooks Author in the early weeks of lectures in relation to its benefits of interactive elements, I aspired to use it in an engaging way to supplement our app prototype.

I composed short tunes on musescore and edited the note heads to match the colour of the coloured circles on our fingerboard template - matching both visuals to achieve a uniform graphic aid for the user. Exporting the midi files to then insert into the iBook would be an effective way provide a guide to the visual notation as well. The tunes are written with a graded difficulty, starting off simple and then getting more complex - playing only one string, then to multiple strings and various other finger patterns.

The pop-over feature, I loved especially as it allowed the option to 'see the answers'. I used that feature as a hint if users needed to check what finger patterns they needed to apply for that particular tune.

Click here to check out the series of drafts, music and audio clips compiled to make the iBook!