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Article Reviews Concerning Human Computer Interaction Issues
Reviewed by
Barbara Schulz for
Human Computer Interaction
Dr. Laurie P. Dringus, Professor
NOVA Southeastern University
Spring Cluster 2003
Table of Contents
Designing Storytelling Technologies to Encourage Collaboration 3
between Young Children
Benford, S. et al (2000)
Classroom Collaboration in the Design of Tangible Interfaces for 7
Storytelling
Stanton, D. et al. (2001)
Physical Programming: Designing Tools for Children to Create11
Physical Interactive Environments
Montemayer, A et al. (2002)
Making Web Sites be Places for Social Interaction 14
Girgensohn, A. & Lee, A. (2002)
Cognitive Walkthrough for the Web 18
Blackmon, M. et al(2002)
1
Designing storytelling technologies to encourage collaboration between young children
Citation:
Benford, S. B., B.; Akesson, K.; Bayon, V.; Druin, A.; Hansson, P.; Hourcade, J.; Ingram, R.; Neale, H.; O'Malley, C.; Simsarian, K.; Stanton, D.; Sundblad, Y.; & Taxen, G. (2000). Designing storytelling technologies to encourage collaboration between young children. CHI Letters, 2(1), 556-563.
Problem:
Young children are vociferous learners, but frequently have difficulty learning to work together. Educational research indicates that working together connects learning into long-term memory (Lotan, 2002). In education today, with the focus on standards based instruction and the wealth of materials that students need to learn in their twelve short years of education, it has become of paramount importance to teach collaborative skills in the classroom. Can technology assist in teaching students to learn collaboration skills? This article describes the development of tools created to aid in teaching students to collaborate.
Summary:
The authors of this article have created unique software tools that utilize technology to teach young students to collaborate. They created two tools, KidPad and Klump, which encourage children to collaborate to enhance their own creations.
With KidPad, students have drawing tools such as crayons to create drawing objects, an arrow to pick up and move objects, an eraser for deleting elements, a hand to zoom into objects as a story is being told, ‘turn alive’ – an animation tool, a bulletin board to save stories for others to see, and a toolbox to organize their tools. All these tools can be utilized individually to create stories and pictures on the computer. The software is a Single Display Groupware System, which enables several mice to be plugged into one machine. This enables several students to manipulate what they see on the screen at the same time. Through the evaluation and usability study, the authors added several features to “enforce collaboration”. If the children used the mice together in the same spot, they could combine colors to make new ones, or create enhanced actions of the tools or objects.
Klump, the other tool developed by the same authors, was based on 3D modeling, and involved moving a 3D figure by stretching, changing textures, rotating, and coloring. When students made changes, Klump emitted sounds to acknowledge those changes, which is a unique method to demonstrate the visibility of system status (Preece, 2002).
Utilizing Schneiderman’s (1998) golden rules for expert reviews, the authors kept an eye on flexibility and ease of use by adding shortcuts, as well as a ‘duplicating tool’, and areas to create new colors. They discerned the need for these additions by enabling the children to give them informative feedback on the use of the tools. The authors also mentioned several incidences where they changed tools to offer error prevention, such as overwriting another’s work, and permit easy removal of actions. Sometimes this prevention was brought about by the encouragement to collaborate with the tools, thus teaching students the value of collaboration.
The authors included a discussion in the article on the effects of what they term the “collaboration continuum” and its effects on user control and freedom (Preece, 2002). They explained that their approach was to encourage collaboration rather than to enforce collaboration as stated by Light, Foot, and Colbourn (1997).
Reactions:
The authors’ exhibited true creativity and professionalism in the development of these tools. Their creativity is evident in thinking that they can teach such an elusive skill as collaboration. Their professionalism is apparent in the usability methods they employed to create, test and enhance these tools. From the pre-planning, to observation of the students, to utilizing student input during development, evidence of many of Preece’s (2002) heuristics such as recognition rather than recall could be seen. The researchers showed evidence of aesthetic and minimalist design by keeping tools and colors to a minimum, while giving students the ability to create more tools.
It is really exciting to envision the possibilities of this type of tool for use in the elementary classroom and beyond! Collaboration is indeed a skill many children find difficult to learn. The competitive nature of the types of software that most children play with at home via Game Boy or video games have taught students that computers are for competition, rather than collaboration. This competitiveness makes it more challenging for teachers trying to teach a curriculum that needs collaboration to spark the long term learning necessary to measure up to state testing standards. Therefore, it is encouraging to see that the same medium that taught the students competitiveness, can be utilized to teach collaboration. It will be interesting to compare the materials the authors created a year later, which are discussed in the next article review.
Reference:
Lotan, R. A. (2002). Group-Worthy Tasks: Carefully constructed group learning activities can foster students' academic and social growth and help close the achievement gap. Educational Leadership, 60(6), 72-75.
Preece, J., Rogers, Y., Sharp, H. (2002). Interaction design: beyond human-computer interaction. Danvers, MA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Schneiderman, B. (1998). Designing the user interface: Strategies for effective human-computer interaction (3rd ed.). Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.
For Further Reading:
Barfurth, M. (1995). Understanding the collaborative learning process in a technology rich environment: The case of children’s disagreements. Proc CSCL 1995.
Light, P., Foot, T., Colbourn, C. (1997) Collaborative interactions at the microcomputer keyboard. Educational Psychology, 7(1), 13-21.
O’Malley, C. (1992). Designing Computer Systems to support peer learning. European Journal of Psychology of Education, VII (4), 339-352.
Stewart, J., Raybourn, E., Bederson, B., & Druin, A. (1998). When two hands are better than one: Enhancing collaboration using single display groupware. CHI’98Extended Abstracts, 287-288.
Wood, D., O’Malley, C., (1996) Collaborative learning between peers: An overview. Educational Psychology in Practice, 11(4), 4-9.
Classroom Collaboration in the Design of Tangible Interfaces for Storytelling
Citation: Stanton, D., Bayon, V., Neale, H., Ghali, A., Benford, S., Cobb, S., Ingram, R., O'Malley, C., Wilson, J., & Pridmore, T. (2001). Classroom collaboration in the design of tangible interfaces for storytelling. SIGCHI'01, 3(1), 482-489.
Problem:
KidPad, a 2D drawing tool, had been developed to help students bring their stories to life, while encouraging them to collaborate. This unique tool had been adapted with several mice so students could create collaboratively on the same screen. However, this unique use sometimes violated Preece’s (2002) heuristic rule of user control and freedom, as it required simultaneous use of several mice or keys to zoom to another part of the drawing. Navigating was sometimes difficult for the same reasons.
In addition to the usability issues, several pedagogical issues prompted the authors to modify and extend KidPad’s interactivity. The design of KidPad with its attached multiple mice, still limited its use to small groups of 2-3 children. It needed to be adapted for use with a whole class or larger group. KidPad had also been created for students to create individual or group stories, but a teacher in the United Kingdom wanted to be able to utilize it with the whole class for story retelling. The authors wanted to extend its use to adopt an approach that was physical and tangible, which meets the learning needs of young students. The desire to make it physical and tangible created some unique design challenges such as making interaction visible to a larger audience. This meant larger screens and many different prompts were needed.
Summary:
The authors called on the students to aid in the design of the interaction tools. Brainstorming with the children and developing low-tech models captured their ideas, thus exhibiting an incredible example of Preece’s (2002) heuristic of a match between system and real world. The children expressed the need to interact using other methods than the keyboard, such as touching hot spots, or talking to the computer. Thus a “Magic Carpet” was designed to allow students to use their whole body or a hand or foot to interact with the computer. The carpet was built with keyboard parts hidden under the carpet, and squares drawn on the carpet, so students knew where to stand to “talk” to the computer. The use of an invisible video camera helped the researchers capture students’ movements as they tried to interact, so that tools could be fine-tuned to match the needs of students.
A larger screen was requested by the children, as was the use of real objects in their storytelling. To enable the real objects to be viewed by the computer, bar coding technology was attached to the objects. When the students touched or moved the object, the barcode was read by the computer and moved appropriately on the large screen. After many iterations and the testing of three prototypes, the process was fine tuned, and the new physical KidPad was born. The large size of the tool makes it difficult for a child to manage alone, so collaboration was encouraged by the technology.
The authors describe a good example of Preece’s (2002) iteration principle during the design process when they discuss the design of the carpet. It is noted that when rectangles were used on the carpet to indicate where the sensors for the keyboard were located, the children tended to jump vigorously on the square. However, when an arrow was used in place of the rectangle, they tended to step cautiously with one foot. The point is made that there are more ways of interacting physically than with the traditional interface of a mouse.
This new interface comes with some challenges. Preece’s (2002) flexibility and efficiency of use principle is challenged by the size of the tool. Because the main parts are carpet sized, and take up an entire classroom, the pieces had to be removed after the activity was completed. It took several researchers to move the carpet and props, making it unrealistic for a teacher to handle independently. Flexibility is a challenge in regards to the tools themselves, as the props would need to be changed for every story that the students want to retell. This flexibility issue would also be a challenge to Preece’s consistency heuristic.
Reactions:
This tool is really exciting from an educational standpoint, although it sounds like a nightmare from a usability viewpoint. It permits for whole body interaction, allowing students to get up and move around the room, as well as to interact with peers. Many primary age students need this ability to move around to gain complete understanding and learning. An additional benefit would be that the large screen would make it easier for the children’s interaction to be seen around the room, which would be a benefit when parents are invited to visit.
The usability issues would cause some major concerns in a regular classroom. Having to take down and set up the mat and props would cause most teachers to not utilize the tool. A teacher would have to be thoroughly planned in advance to have the appropriate props ready for use for the lesson. The props would change with each story that is being retold, which makes it usable only in the whole class scenario. It would take an enormous amount of time to interchange the props needed for groups to retell a story.
It has been interesting to read two articles about the same tool. It gave the reviewer good insight into the development process needed for interactive tools. It has also been exciting to see tools that are being developed to promote collaboration in the classroom. It makes the reviewer’s mind spin with the possibilities, and look forward to seeing what will be available in the future!
Reference:
Preece, J., Rogers, Y., Sharp, H. (2002). Interaction design: Beyond human-computer interaction. Danvers, MA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Schneiderman, B. (1998). Designing the user interface: Strategies for effective human-computer interaction (3rd ed.). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Stanton, D., Bayon, V., Neale, H., Ghali, A., Benford, S., Cobb, S., Ingram, R., O'Malley, C., Wilson, J., & Pridmore, T. (2001). Classroom collaboration in the design of tangible interfaces for storytelling. SIGCHI'0, 3(1), 482-489.
For Further Reading:
Bobick, A., Intille, S., Davis, J., Baird, F., Pinhanez, C., Campbell, L., Ivanov, Y., Schutte, A., & Wilson, A. (2000). The KidsRoom: A perceptually-based interactive and immersive story environment. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 8(4), 367-391.
Crook, C., (1994) Computers and the Collaborative Experience of Learning. Routledge.
Gorbet, M., Orth, M., & Ishii, H. (1998). Triangles: Tangible interface for manipulation and exploration of digital information topography. Proc. CHI ’98. ACM, 49-56.
Ryokai, K. & Cassel, J. (1999). Computer support for children’s collaborative fantasy play and storytelling. Proc. CSCL ’99. Stanford, CA.
Physical Programming: Designing Tools for Children to Create Physical Interactive Environments
Citation:
Montemayer, J., Druin, A., Farber, A., Simms, S., Churanman, W., D'Amour, A. (2002, April 20-25, 2002). Physical Programming: Designing Tools for Children to Create Physical Interactive Environments. Paper presented at the CHI Letters, Minneapolis, MN.
Problem:
According to researchers (Brosterman, 1997; Bruner, 1966; & Papert, 1980), a critical part of a child’s early cognitive development involves relating to and manipulating his physical world. These skills are similar to and eventually lead to the skills needed in the computer programming field. But how early can children start to learn programming?
Summary:
The authors of this article wanted to offer children the ability to make a room interactive by programming materials in that room to interact with them. But before they could find out if children were capable of creating an interactive room, it had to be determined if children ages four to nine could understand an interactive story. They set up a story about a fictitious character named Irene.
In the story, the child pretends to be Irene who is lost. The child presses a hand symbol on the prop for a cottage, which causes the light to go on next to a mouse. The child then asks the mouse where her house is, and mouse tells her to see Mr. Kaola. The child squeezes the hand next to Mr. Koala, and the green light next to the snake lights up. Mr. Koala sends the child to Mr. Snake who takes the child back home.
While most of the children understood how to comprehend the physical story, and participate in using the interactive props, it was another matter to get children to understand how to program the props for their own story. Most children wrote stories similar to the demonstrated one with little creativity. Then the children had difficulty realizing that in planning the story, they were programming tools, not actually telling the story. The researchers spent several sessions with the children. During the first two sessions, the children explored the tools. Before these sessions, the researchers had developed numerous StoryKits that included various approaches to programming the physical environment. For example, if a child steps on a carpet square in her room, she wants the desk lamp to turn on. This creates a programming rule. A magic wand was the symbol for start and end of the programming process. The sessions were videotaped and analyzed to test for flexibility of different technologies depending on user interaction.
The lessons learned by the researchers included realization that children can understand interactive stories and participate in an already created story.
However, whether students were able to program at the suggested age was less clear cut. One or more children in each group were able to program. Only three out of eleven students had difficulty programming a physical space.
Reactions:
While it is understood why it is important for a child to manipulate his physical world, and programming is a step in that direction, this article was a little confusing to follow. It was filled with details about programming physical environments and the evolution of the authors’ programming tools, but didn’t talk about the actual study until over halfway through the article.
However, the references to the evolution of the tools were enlightening as to the usability concepts tapped while creating the prototypes of the interactive environment. Students were design partners with the researchers over a two-year period of time, giving them feedback on several issues. One of these issues was the medium used to deliver the interactive stories, which was consequently changed from a screen to physical icons. Another issue brought to light by the students was the challenge of being able to ascertain that programming was different from telling the actual story.
While the concepts behind the study are interesting, the authors admitted to the fact that they haven’t thought about how the concepts can be adapted to a classroom. Adaptation for use in public school classrooms will raise many more usability questions., as well as more topics for future research.
Reference:
Brosterman, N.(1997) Inventing kindergarten. Harry N. Adams, Inc.
Bruner, J. (1966) Toward a theory of instruction. Harvard University Press.
Papert, S. (1980) Mindstorms: Children, computers and powerful ideas. New York: Basic Books.
For Further Reading:
Annany, M., and Cassell, J. (2001) Telltale: A toy to encourage written literacy skills through oral storytelling. Presentation at Conference on Text, Discourse and Cognition.
Making Web Sites be Places for Social Interaction
Citation: Girgensohn, A., Lee, A. (2002). Making web sites be places for social interaction. Paper presented at the CSCW '02, New Orleans, LA.
Problem: