Applying the Participatory Design to develop an interactive educational platform for children 1
Ying-Hsiu Kuo1, Ju-Joan Wong2
Department of Industrial Design College of management, Chang- Gung University Graduated Student
[email protected] 2 Department of Industrial Design College of management, Chang- Gung University Assistant Professor 259,Wen-Hua 1st Rd., Kwei-Shan, Tao-Yuan 333, Taiwan. R.O.C
Abstract This article mainly discusses the application of a participation design to develop an interactive educational platform for children. The main group using the Internet has become younger and younger; Children using the Internet to obtain knowledge and communicate has become more generality then before (children, as defined in this research are from 7 to 12 years old). This research will permit the designer and the children to discover their needs and wants, and propose suggestions for an interactive educational platform. Keywords: Participatory, Interactive, Platform
1
Introduction
According to Taiwan Network Information Center’s January announcement in 2007, a report on “the Taiwan wide band network use investigation” shows that up to January 15th, the overall population (0-100 year old) accessing the net reached 66.91% in Taiwan. That means it has become easy to use the Internet in school and at home. With the Participatory Design method of support, the designer is no longer engaged in one-sided designing. This research will propose suggestions concerning the interactive educational platform. We hope to discover: (1) When are the children learning from the Internet, does the platform satisfy them? (2) How should the interactive educational platform be organized and presented for children?
2
Literature review
This research uses the Participatory Design, and Usability Engineering to propose suggestions for the interactive educational platform. The character of the participatory design is designing along with the user, and evaluating results through workshop and prototype until both are satisfied with the result (Spinuzzi, 2005). This research will invite children to join in; their direct feedback will help the designer and developer to
better understand their demands and problems. The method of Participatory Design lets those participating be the designer. Users’ participation will reveal the usability problem from the on-line website, and to discover the tacit knowledge which will offer design suggestions and directions for the website to take. Atlee (2003) described “Collective Intelligence”: as the shared insights that are derived from group interaction, particularly where the outcome is more insightful and powerful than the sum of individual perspectives. Participatory design aims to discover the tacit knowledge from the Collective Intelligence. The tacit knowledge is often neglected and undervalued, because it can’t be systemized or quantified. But it will be the essential factor to succeed by tapping into the tacit knowledge of users. The International Standard Organization (ISO) defined the product or the tool. The product’s engineering usability refers to the ability to allow specific users to use under a specific environment, and it is an acceptable way to effectively, efficiently, and satisfactorily achieve the specific goals. This research will depend on the demands from the children, and use an expert heuristic evaluation, to evaluate the on-line website. Nielsen, J. (1993) stated that the heuristic evaluation is based on the details of the interface’s usability problem. The evaluator will employ the usability principle. The expert heuristic method’s goals are to: (1) Depend on the principle of the usability to explain the usability problem. (2) It will produce design after design by the detection principle of the interface. Meanwhile, the problem of the usability problem will be modified following recognition.
3
Research method
This research uses the Participatory Design for two reasons: (1) Participatory Design can enable the designer and the user group to communicate in order to discover user needs. (2) Because the children comprise the new user group, interviews can reveal their tacit knowledge, and this method can be applied to this platform. Operational flow for this research STEP 1: Develop the user computer mental model. (1) Correlation studies for child cognition (2) Child computer/network ability questionnaire STEP 2: Set up the Participatory Design Group. Establish mutual confidence between the researcher and participants STEP 3: Experiments to determine the possible functions between the interface and the user. Evaluate the existing platform: Experiment 1: participants make the satisfaction and usability evaluation of the online platform Experiment 2: experts make the expert heuristic evaluation of the on-line platform This research aimed to develop an interactive educational platform for children, by the researcher and the children (user), according to the engineering usability method and principles.
4
Status discovery
4.1
Child computer/network ability questionnaire survey
The status will help to choose the children who have learned about the computer from school. The questionnaire is to know the present stage child' s situation when use the computer and Internet. From the result of the questionnaire, we may deducealmost all of the participants had the basic computer operation and network browsing ability, and the time that they spent accessing the net was not long. When developing the child network interface we should pay attention to the information presented with the interface design should not require spending a long time to glance over and arouse children' s interest. 4.2
Set up the Participatory Design Group
The research evaluation group is consisted of researchers and elementary school six graders with the same level of computer ability. There are 14 members in the group, including 6 researchers and 8 students. 4.3
Experiment 1: Semi-structured questionnaire on the satisfaction and usability evaluation of the on-line platform
The children’s interview was carried out via semi-structured questionnaire to facilitate communication, to obtain the children’s opinion to this research system content and the interface design. Before this experiment, we have checked the subjects’ ability to use the computer and internet from the computer/internet questionnaire, the experiment was meant to evaluate the on-line website: (1) Website A: The interaction design- http://www.npm.gov.tw/game/home.htm (2) Website B: The tradition and the interaction mixed style design- http://children.cca.gov.tw/home.php (3) Website C: The traditional ultra document design- http://www.bud.org.tw/index.php. The table 1 shows the results of website A, B, C. 4.4
Experiment 2:The expert heuristic method to evaluate the interface design
The research by Franca G. et al. (1995) attested to the use of a heuristic evaluation to evaluate the hypermedia document as helpful for understanding the advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, this research used the heuristic method to evaluate the online platform. The researcher invited five experts to evaluate the interface of the children’s platform via the heuristic method, to find problems in usage and propose suggestions regarding the interactive educational platform. And they evaluate the three platforms as Experiment 1.
Table 1: The results of experiment 1
Question 1: Satisfaction with the colors
Website A
Website B
Website C
Question 2: Opinion of the information
Website A
Website B
Website C
Question 3: The most satisfying part
Website A
Website B
Website C
Question 4: The most unsatisfying part (Duplicate selection)
Website A
Website B
Website C
0 2 1 0 0 4
3 3 2 3 1 1
1 2 2 0 2 0
Very Satisfied Satisfied OK Dislike Very dislike Enough OK Not Enough Style Layout Graphics Words Music Form None
Style Layout Graphics Words Music Form None
7 1 0 0 0 6 2 0 4 0 5 1 7 0 0
3 3 0 2 0 5 3 0 4 0 4 2 4 1 0
3 3 2 0 0 3 5 0 1 0 6 5 0 2 0
Question 5: The whole feeling
2 Website A
2 Website B
2 Website C
Question 6: The scores for Website C
Website A
Website B
Website C
Very Nice Nice Normal Not Good Bad scale
5 3 0 0 0
75
4 1 1 2 0
63
2 3 3 0 0
67
The experts come from different backgrounds, including: one cognition professor of psychology, one ergonomic expert, one system use engineering expert, two primary education background experts and one information management background graduate student (now a graduate student of industrial design). The heuristic evaluation of the children’s website design was according to Franca G. et al.’s (1995) seven heuristic evaluation criteria for the hypermedia document. The following constitute the principles of the evaluation and expansion: (1) Richness (2) Ease (3) Consistency (4) Self-evidence (5) Predictability (6) Readability (7) Reuse. The result of experiment 2: The following are the suggestions regarding the interface of the children’s website: (a) The interface of the children’s website should have sound. (b) The information presented should not too complex, and should consider the interface’s reusability. (c) The children’s website’s hyper link design should combine unity and clarity. (d) The children’s website’s hyper link design should consider the proper interaction, and not be too complex. (e) If there’s a search engine on the website, it will be easy to look up information. (f) The richness of the children’s platform will enhance the user’s willingness to use this platform.
5
Conclusion
Although there’s a richer dynamic effort in the interaction design interface which is very appealing in grabbing children’s attention, as compared to the traditional ultra document design. However, the interaction design caused the usability problems, so
it’s difficult to design because the website designer had to consider the present form of the website’s information, and how the interface fits the children’s recognition. Therefore, a multimedia children website development should not only rely on one website designer, but also include various experts’ domains. And this research will have two more experiments in the future: (1) one experiment is to determine the possible functions between the interface and the user. (2) another experiment is to determine the possible links between the design of the interface, and the Develop the prototype of the interactive educational platform. As a result of combining the children’s education with the Internet, it will be possible to review and preview the content which their teacher taught; or share their opinion after class; it may also enhance the communication between teacher and parents through the website. This research aimed to explore the children’s needs and opinions regarding learning from the Internet, and to provide suggestions and direction for the development of the interactive educational platform for children.
6
Acknowledgement
This research is part of the National Science Council granted project, Republic of China. (NSC97-3314-E-002-005)
7 1.
Reference
Anderson, J. R. Cognitive Psychology and its Implications: Fourth Edition. W. H. Freeman and Company, New York (1995) 2. Atlee, T. The Tao of democracy The Writers Collective, Cranston, RI. (2003) 3. Carroll, J. M., & Thomas, J. C.. Metaphor and the cognitive representation of computing systems. IEEE transactions on Syetems, Man, and Cybernetics, SMC12 (2), 107-116. 4. Clay Spinuzzi. The Methodology of Participatory Design. Technical Communication, Academic Research Library pg. 163. (2005) 5. Hanna, L., Risden, K., and Alexander, K. J. Guidelines for Usability Testing with Children. Interactions, September-October, 9-14. (1997) 6. Hanna, L., Risden, K., Czerwinski, M. and Alexander, K. J. The role of Usability Research in Designing Childrens Computer Products, in Durin, A. (ed.), The Design of Childrens Technology.(1999) 7. Luck, R. Dialogue in Participatory Design, Design Studies, Vol 24, pp523535.(2003) 8. Nielsen, J. Usability Heuristics. Usability Engineering. AP Professional, Academic Press, San Diego, USA(1993) pp.155-163 9. Sanoff, H. Special issue on participatory design. Design Studies, Vol 28, Pages 213-215. (2007) 10. Yu Shiou, Hung. Research on WWW Interface for Children, National Cheng Kung University Department of Industrial Design, master' s thesis. (2002)
