Critical Evaluation
- UI/UX
- Functionality
- Stability
- Efficiency
- Compatibility
- Maintainability
- Project Management
UI/UX
The user interface and user experience of our app is intuitive and child-friendly. The background is simple and clean so that it won’t distract the users. The song selection menu used the Zone of Regulation rule [1], helping the therapist or children to find a suitable song. In the play scene, the controller bar is located in an appropriate position so that the users can focus on the audio and the dynamic visuals themselves. Setting options are clearly labeled in the menu and logically named, making the navigation more straightforward. The feedback from the test users are consistently positive.
Overall, we believe the UI/UX design is excellent and highly suitable for our goal and audiences. There are small improvements we would like to make to improve readability in certain areas. As well as adding deeper integration with assistive tools like custom fonts.
Reference
[1] The Zones of Regulation, [Online]. Available: https://zonesofregulation.com/. [Accessed: Mar. 27, 2025].
Functionality
Based on the requirements summary, all compulsory features have been implemented, with only a few non-critical functionalities remaining undeployed, which have minimal impact on the overall product. After comprehensive testing, the system performs reliably, with only a few minor bugs detected. During our demo sessions with clients and users, no issues were reported.
In summary, our product is a fully functional audio visualiser, offering dependable song upload and storage, LLM-based lyrics analysis, and lively, animated, and comprehensive visualisation features.
Stability
The app performed well under unit test and stress test, demonstrating a high-level of stability under various conditions. Throughout multiple rounds of tests, the app maintained consistent performance without any unexpected crash or behaviour. All critical issues observed during the client and user demo sessions were fixed. Overall, the product is proved stable and dependable, indicating a strong base for deployment to the public.
Efficiency
During the performance test and stress test, the system demonstrated a consistently good efficiency in all the mainstream Intel products. All the core functions like rendering are smooth and song uploading, data storage and LLM analysis are executed with optimised computational cost. The interface also responds rapidly to the user interactions, ensuring a seamless experience across all devices. Although there is room for further optimisation in handling large number of particles on screen at the same time, the overall performance has met the team’s expectation.
Compatibility
Though the application was initially designed to run cross-platform with improved performance on Intel’s NPUs, due to a path problem, our app cannot properly load image and audio assets on any UNIX system including Linux and macOS. We also did not implement mobile device support, as our target users (therapists, schools, and hospitals) do not require it.
Despite these limitations, the system has been successfully tested on a range of AMD and Intel chipsets. The app adjusts to different monitor resolutions automatically to ensure the sharpness and clearness of the visuals. Therefore, although we weren't able to support all platforms as initially planned, the compatibility is sufficient for our client base within an acceptable budget.
Maintainability
Our system is developed strictly following software design principles. Each component is separated by its functionality, allowing us to debug, test, and add new features individually without affecting other parts of the system. Our codebase is well documented with a detailed README briefing all the important technologies in the app.
The team followed consistent naming conventions, enabling future developers to understand and work with the code efficiently. All third-party libraries are managed with standard package managers, reducing conflict risks. To summarise, our system is well structured for long-term maintenance and future feature extensions.
Project Management
We utilised a variety of tools to effectively manage this project. Our team communicated and held regular meetings through Microsoft Teams, where each member shared updates and planned weekly goals. To track development and share documentation, we used Notion. Code collaboration was handled through a dedicated GitHub repository with pull requests and commit history.
Ultimately, the team demonstrated a professional, well-organised, and efficient workflow throughout the project—reflecting strong project management practices.