Heuristic Evaluation:
This week I performed a heuristic evaluation on an application developed for the iPhone and iPad, in order to discover any usability issues in the interface design.
Some of the key differences between a heuristic evaluation and a standard user test:
- There is no need for the observer to interpret the users action, since the user evaluating the interface is a domain or HCI expert.
- The users willingness/ability to answer questions and explain their actions
- The extent to which the observer can provide hints to use the interface, which would allow for better assessment of the usability.
Prior to the evaluation, I was provided with a very brief description of the application (similar to that which would be provided when downloading the application).
The evaluation was performed without any further tutorial, in hopes of remaining as independent and unbiased as possible.
A written record was kept of all issues discovered or any additional comments. Following each evaluation, I discussed these issues with developer and we reviewed the potential fixes.
iPhone
Length of evaluation: 20 mins
Some principles that were reviewed:
- Aesthetic and minimalist design
- Visibility of system status
- Efficiency of the user: Keywords first
- Consistency and standards
iPad
Length of evaluation: 1 hour
Some principles that were reviewed:
- Aesthetic and minimalist design
- Consistency and standards
- Recognition rather than recall
- Documentation and Help text
The first iteration of changes to the iPhone version were implemented mid-week. The second iteration of changes are in progress and will be scheduled for review late this week/early next week.
Research:
In order to evaluate an educational application or tutoring software, it is important to examine particular teaching strategies and concepts that have been proven to promote student engagement and knowledge retention.
The following concepts stem from the constructivist learning theory, which states that humans generate knowledge and meaning from their ideas and past experiences. "How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition" elaborates on evidence that shows that if teacher use their students preexisting knowledge as a starting point, the student's learning is enhanced. However, our difficulty is that a tutor or a teacher has the ability to adapt their material to cater to the strengths and particular learning ability of the student. It is much more difficult to replicated this in a computer-based learning environment.
There are several issues that arise when attempting to effectively transfer knowledge from 'teacher' to 'student', in the classroom or online:
- Per-conceived ideas and preexisting knowledge of the learners: they come with prior knowledge, skills and beliefs, and will ignore what he or she thinks is known to them.
- Miscommunication: The users mental model and understanding is often not the same as that which is trying to be conveyed.
- Loss of interest: This is why clarification and confirmation of understanding is essential!
The Commission on Behavioral and Social Science Education also outlined several principles in order to enhance the learning experience:
- Active Learning: Users should be able to recognize when they are not understanding a concept, and need more information. This is often referred to as taking a metacognitive approach to instruction, where the student is taught to monitor their own learning. This can be very challenging depending on the age and cognitive ability of the student.
- Repeated exposure to key concepts
- Frequent, formative and reflective assessments: This approach supports active learning, and should test deep understanding rather than just surface knowledge (memorization).
- Deep foundation of knowledge and understanding: Attempting to cover many concepts too quickly can promote surface learning by conditioning the student to learn only isolated sets of facts.
Thus, establishing a foundation of factual knowledge and promoting reflection has been proven to help accomplish the educational objective. In a comparison of deep and surface learning approaches, Biggs states that "Reflection is indicative of deep learning, and where teaching and learning activities such as reflection are missing...only surface learning can result." (Biggs 1999 in King 2002).
Evaluations:
I met with Angela Jeske, a psychology student involved in one of the cognitive game projects. We discussed the progress of the project and the potential need for user evaluations in the near future. This meeting requires a follow-up to determine the extent of the Comp Sci Department involvement in the evaluation.
My research begins this week by reviewing important HCI concepts such as the user mental model, human information processing, recognition and perception, and job/task analysis, and how they can improve and support UI design in relation to 7 very influential aspects:
- Availability
- Feedback
- Flexibility
- Safety
- Affordance
- Simplicity
- Familiarity
Usability has emerged as prominent area of HCI and is now seems to be a vital factor in the success of educational software. Nielson notes 6 attributes to usability: learnability, effectiveness, flexibility, understandability, memorability and reliability (1). However, an educational application must not only be easy to use, but must support and contribute to the ease of learning of the material it presents. For this reason, traditional design and evaluation strategies are not sufficient to ensure a successful product. A learner-centered approach to design and evaluation is a modification of the traditional user-centered approach, which allows us to go beyond functional usability and the traditional heuristic evaluation, and examine the effectiveness of the learning process involved.1. Expanding the Concept of Usability, Alex Koohang
