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From a Developer's Perspective to a User-Centered Perspective: Developing Usable Mobile Educational Applications

Zhu, Qing
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1406738627

Abstract Details

2014, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (Engineering and Technology).
User involvement in software engineering aims at maximizing system usability by understanding users' needs and expectations. This dissertation aims at improving software's quality by using user feedbacks. Questionnaires have been used as an evaluation tool to collect users' subjective opinions on usage of software products. They are usually used for summative evaluation to understand users' attitude towards a software product, while system logs are usually used for formative evaluation to understand users' interaction with the product. Upon developing Virtual Boat for Environmental Education (VBEE), an iPad 3D Virtual World Educational Game, a questionnaire with software design elements was developed to conduct formative evaluation for VBEE. The instrument was validated with 237 students from six high schools in southeast Ohio. A usability evaluation framework combining the user attitudinal and behavioral data to identify problematic design elements was proposed. Using the framework, the two types of data for VBEE were collected separately but analyzed together. A number of usability issues and solutions were identified. A second round of user surveys, which included 32 students in a high school, showed that users' satisfactions with the updated system improved significantly. Positive learning outcomes are the ultimate goal of designing VBEE. The learning outcomes of VBEE measured by multiple knowledge tests were compared with hands-on experiments in the classroom and a scientific boat trip. The between-subjects comparison results, from 150 students in three participating high schools, showed that the participants' learning outcomes reflected from the tests had significant improvement from pre-tests to post-tests by using any of the three learning approaches. Moreover, the learning outcomes had similar change patterns regardless of the learning approaches they experienced. In addition, the survey results revealed that VBEE was more fun than hands-on experiments in the classroom. The contributions of this dissertation include: 1) it develops a usability instrument with key design elements of the software-under-evaluation, thus the results can be used by developers to identify problematic design elements; 2) it proposes a usability evaluation framework that can be used by a software design team to understand why users have negative attitudes towards some design elements; 3) it conducts empirical research and collects experimental data for both usability and learning outcome evaluations.
Chang Liu (Advisor)
Shawn Ostermann (Committee Member)
Razvan Bunescu (Committee Member)
Jundong Liu (Committee Member)
Computer Science
Software Engineering; user centered perspective; user attitudinal data; user behavioral data

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Zhu, Q. (2014). From a Developer's Perspective to a User-Centered Perspective: Developing Usable Mobile Educational Applications [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1406738627

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Zhu, Qing. From a Developer's Perspective to a User-Centered Perspective: Developing Usable Mobile Educational Applications. 2014. Ohio University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1406738627.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Zhu, Qing. "From a Developer's Perspective to a User-Centered Perspective: Developing Usable Mobile Educational Applications." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1406738627

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ohiou1406738627
567
© 2014, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Ohio University and OhioLINK.