INTERACT 2003 - Bringing the Bits together
Tutorial 5
#5 - Evaluating Interactive Products for and with Children
Stuart MacFarlane, Janet Read
Child-Computer Interaction Group, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK
sjmacfarlane@uclan.ac.uk
Johanna Höysniemi,
Tampere Unit for Computer-Human Interaction, University of Tampere, Finland
Panos Markopoulos
Technical University of Eindhoven, Netherlands
This tutorial offers participants an introduction to evaluation methods and techniques that can be used to assess usability and fun, where the users are children. It also provides opportunities for hands-on experience of some of the methods with children.
Many evaluation methods have been devised, documented, and used successfully in situations where the intended users are adults. These methods include observational and survey methods that involve representative users, and methods such as walkthrough that do not involve users directly but assume a knowledge and understanding of their actions. Most of these methods need special approaches, if they can be used at all, when the intended users are children. In addition, most evaluation methods used with adults are concerned primarily with the usability of a product; with children, usability remains important, but evaluating fun is likely to also be a major concern.
We have used a variety of evaluation methods and situations involving children, evaluating both usability and fun. Our aim in this new tutorial is to pass on some of our experience of what works and what doesn’t to developers who may need to carry out evaluations of interactive products for children. We define children to be people aged under 16 years, but most of the discussion, and the practical work, will involve working with children under 12 years.
The goals of participants in this tutorial will be:
- To understand the roles a child can play in the evaluation process.
- To become familiar with some evaluation methods that have proved useful with child users.
- To gain practical experience of at least two different evaluation techniques involving children.
- To appreciate the challenges and rewards of working with children as evaluators.