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Guidelines for Remote Usability Testing of Children's Interactive Products

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2018, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, Instructional Technology (Education).
Instructional designers are often discouraged from testing their learning products due to the challenges faced when attempting to apply the traditional approaches of usability testing. As a result, scholars have been trying new methods to overcome those challenges. Remote usability testing, often operated by crowdsourcing websites, is one of those methods. However, crowdsourced usability testing websites are usually restricted to adult users. Consequently, the instructional designers of children’s learning products do not have the advantage of harnessing the potentials of remote usability testing. As a first step for the instructional designers of children’s products to overcome the challenges of the existing usability testing methods, this study was intended to create a set of guidelines for the design of remote usability testing websites for children’s interactive products. Following a design and development research methodology, the researcher has used the literature’s guidelines of usability testing with children and the principles of cognitive load theory in designing a remote usability testing tool to answer the following research questions: What can be learned about the remote usability testing guidelines in terms of the features and characteristics of the usability testing tool that are related to the children nine to ten years old? What can be learned from iterative design process to inform remote usability testing guidelines in terms of improving the role of parents in such a way that can reduce their workload while maintaining a good quality of usability testing results? And what concerns do parents have regarding their children’s participation in crowdsourced usability testing? Observations, interviews, and fieldnotes were used to collect data in three iterations from 18 participants, nine parents and nine children. The results cover the specifications in the remote usability testing tool that worked with the children and the parents, and it covers the guidelines that are derived from the parents’ concerns regarding their children’s participation in remote usability testing. The results were summarized in a list of tentative guidelines for practitioners who are interested in designing crowdsourced or remote usability testing websites for children’s interactive products.
David Moore, Professor (Advisor)
334 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Alkhawajah, A. (2018). Guidelines for Remote Usability Testing of Children's Interactive Products [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1525711014013404

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Alkhawajah, Amirah. Guidelines for Remote Usability Testing of Children's Interactive Products. 2018. Ohio University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1525711014013404.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Alkhawajah, Amirah. "Guidelines for Remote Usability Testing of Children's Interactive Products." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1525711014013404

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)