[go: up one dir, main page]
More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/ skip to main content
10.1145/1518701.1518803acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PageschiConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

A survey of software learnability: metrics, methodologies and guidelines

Published: 04 April 2009 Publication History

Abstract

It is well-accepted that learnability is an important aspect of usability, yet there is little agreement as to how learnability should be defined, measured, and evaluated. In this paper, we present a survey of the previous definitions, metrics, and evaluation methodologies which have been used for software learnability. Our survey of evaluation methodologies leads us to a new question-suggestion protocol, which, in a user study, was shown to expose a significantly higher number of learnability issues in comparison to a more traditional think-aloud protocol. Based on the issues identified in our study, we present a classification system of learnability issues, and demonstrate how these categories can lead to guidelines for addressing the associated challenges.

References

[1]
Abran, A., Khelifi, A., Suryn, W. and Seffah, A. (2003). Usability Meanings and Interpretations in ISO standards. Software Quality Journal. 11:325--338.
[2]
Baecker, R., Booth, K., Jovicic, S., McGrenere, J. and Moore, G. (2000). Reducing the gap between what users know and what they need to know. Proceedings on the 2000 conference on Universal Usability. 17--23.
[3]
Bevan, N. and Macleod, M. (1994). Usability measurement in context. Behaviour and Information Technology. 13:132--145.
[4]
Butler, K. A. (1985). Connecting theory and practice: a case study of achieving usability goals. ACM CHI. 85--88.
[5]
Carroll, J., Mack, R., Lewis, C., Grischkowsky, N. and Robertson, S. (1985). Exploring exploring a word processor. Human-Computer Inter. 1:283--307.
[6]
Carroll, J. M. (1990). The Nurnberg Funnel. MIT Press.
[7]
Carroll, J. M. and Carrithers, C. (1984). Training wheels in a user interface. Comm. ACM. 27(8):800--806.
[8]
Carroll, J. M. and Rosson, M. B. (1987). Paradox of the active user. Interfacing thought: cognitive aspects of human-computer interaction. MIT Press. 80--111.
[9]
Davis, S. and Wiedenbeck, S. (1998). The effect of interaction style and training method on end user learning of software packages. Interacting with Computers. 11(2):147--172.
[10]
Dix, A., Finlay, J. E., Abowd, G. D. and Beale, R. (2003). Human Computer Interaction. Prentice-Hall.
[11]
Dumas, J. F. and Redish, J. C. (1993). A Practical Guide to Usability Testing. Greenwood Publishing Group Inc.
[12]
Elliott, G. J., Jones, E. and Barker, P. (2002). A grounded theory approach to modeling learnability of hypermedia authoring tools. Interacting with Computers. 14(5):547--574.
[13]
Ericsson, K. A. and Simon, H. A. (1984). Protocol Analysis: Verbal Reports as Data. MIT Press.
[14]
Franzke, M. (1995). Turning research into practice: characteristics of display-based interaction. ACM CHI. 421--428.
[15]
Gilb, T. (1996). Level 6: Why we can't get there from here. IEEE Software. 13(1):97--98, 103.
[16]
Grossman, T., Dragicevic, P. and Balakrishnan, R. (2007). Strategies for accelerating on-line learning of hotkeys. ACM CHI. 1591--1600.
[17]
Haramundanis, K. (2001). Learnability in information design. ACM SIGDOC. 7--11.
[18]
Holzinger, A. (2005). Usability engineering methods for software developers. Comm. of ACM. 48(1):71--74.
[19]
Howes, A. and Young, R. M. (1991). Predicting the learnability of task-action mappings. ACM CHI. 1204--1209.
[20]
Hurst, A., Hudson, S. E. and Mankoff, J. (2007). Dynamic detection of novice vs. skilled use without a task model. ACM CHI. 271--280.
[21]
Jeffries, R., Miller, J. R., Wharton, C. and Uyeda, K. (1991). User interface evaluation in the real world: a comparison of four techniques. ACM CHI. 119--124.
[22]
Kato, T. (1986). What question-asking protocols can say about the user interface. Int. J. Man-Mach. Stud. 25(6):659--673.
[23]
Kelleher, C. and Pausch, R. (2005). Stencils-based tutorials: design and evaluation. ACM CHI. 541--550.
[24]
Kieras, D. E. and Polson, P. G. (1985). An approach to the formal analysis of user complexity. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies. 22:365--394.
[25]
Lazar, J., Jones, A. and Shneiderman, B. (2006). Workplace user frustration with computers: An exploratory investigation of the causes and severity. Behaviour and Info. Technology. 25(3):239--251.
[26]
Licklider, J. C. R. (1976). User-oriented interactive computer graphics. ACM UODIGS. 89--96.
[27]
Lin, H. X., Choong, Y. and Salvendy, G. (1997). A proposed index of usability: a method for comparing the relative usability of different software systems. Behaviour&Information Technology. 16:267--278.
[28]
Linja-aho, M. (2005). Evaluating and Improving the Learnability of a Building Modeling System. Helsinki University of Technology.
[29]
Mack, R. and Robinson, J. B. (1992). When novices elicit knowledge: question asking in designing, evaluating, and learning to use software. The psychology of expertise: cognitive research and empirical AI. Springer-Verlag, Inc. p. 245--268.
[30]
Mack, R. L., Lewis, C. H. and Carroll, J. M. (1983). Learning to use word processors: problems and prospects. ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. 1(3):254--271.
[31]
Mackay, W. E. (1991). Triggers and barriers to customizing software. ACM CHI. 153--160.
[32]
Michelsen, C. D., Dominick, W. D. and Urban, J. E. (1980). A methodology for the objective evaluation of the user/system interfaces of the MADAM system using software engineering principles. ACM Southeast Regional Conference. 103--109.
[33]
Nielsen, J. (1994). Usability Engineering. Morgan Kaufmann.
[34]
Palmiter, S. and Elkerton, J. (1991). An evaluation of animated demonstrations of learning computer-based tasks. ACM CHI. 257--263.
[35]
Paymans, T. F., Lindenberg, J. and Neerincx, M. (2004). Usability trade-offs for adaptive user interfaces: ease of use and learnability. International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces. 301--303.
[36]
Rieman, J. (1996). A field study of exploratory learning strategies. ACM TOCHI. 3(3):189--218.
[37]
Santos, P. J. and Badre, A. N. (1994). Automatic chunk detection in human-computer interaction. AVI. 69--77.
[38]
Santos, P. J. and Badre, A. N. (1995). Discount learnability evaluation. GVU Technical Report GIT-GVU-95-30. Georgia Institute of Technology.
[39]
Shneiderman, B. (1983). Direct Manipulation: A Step Beyond Programming Languages. Comp. 16(8):57--69.
[40]
Shneiderman, B. (1997). Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction. Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc.
[41]
Stickel, C., Fink, J. and Holzinger, A. (2007). Enhancing Universal Access-EEG Based Learnability Assessment. Lecture Notes in Comp. Sci. 813--822.
[42]
Twidale, M. B. (2005). Over the Shoulder Learning: Supporting Brief Informal Learning. CSCW. 14(6):505--547.
[43]
Wixon, D. (2003). Evaluating usability methods: why the current literature fails the practitioner. Interactions. 10(4):28--34.
[44]
Xiao, J., Stasko, J. and Catrambone, R. (2004). An empirical study of the effect of agent competence on user performance and perception. Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems - Volume 1. 178--185.

Cited By

View all
  • (2025)Learnable and Expressive Visualization Authoring Through Blended InterfacesIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2024.345659831:1(459-469)Online publication date: Jan-2025
  • (2024)Gesture-Based Interactions: Integrating Accelerometer and Gyroscope Sensors in the Use of Mobile AppsSensors10.3390/s2403100424:3(1004)Online publication date: 4-Feb-2024
  • (2024)User Experience and Usability of Voice User Interfaces: A Systematic Literature ReviewInformation10.3390/info1509057915:9(579)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2024
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. A survey of software learnability: metrics, methodologies and guidelines

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI '09: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 2009
    2426 pages
    ISBN:9781605582467
    DOI:10.1145/1518701
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 04 April 2009

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. evaluation
    2. learnability
    3. learning
    4. question-suggestion
    5. software
    6. think-aloud
    7. usability

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article

    Conference

    CHI '09
    Sponsor:

    Acceptance Rates

    CHI '09 Paper Acceptance Rate 277 of 1,130 submissions, 25%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

    Upcoming Conference

    CHI 2025
    ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 26 - May 1, 2025
    Yokohama , Japan

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)306
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)25
    Reflects downloads up to 07 Jan 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2025)Learnable and Expressive Visualization Authoring Through Blended InterfacesIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2024.345659831:1(459-469)Online publication date: Jan-2025
    • (2024)Gesture-Based Interactions: Integrating Accelerometer and Gyroscope Sensors in the Use of Mobile AppsSensors10.3390/s2403100424:3(1004)Online publication date: 4-Feb-2024
    • (2024)User Experience and Usability of Voice User Interfaces: A Systematic Literature ReviewInformation10.3390/info1509057915:9(579)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2024
    • (2024)Understanding Novice Users' Mental Models of Gesture Discoverability and Designing Effective OnboardingCompanion of the 2024 on ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing10.1145/3675094.3678370(290-295)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2024
    • (2024)Tutorial mismatches: investigating the frictions due to interface differences when following software video tutorialsProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661511(1942-1955)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
    • (2024)Why and When LLM-Based Assistants Can Go Wrong: Investigating the Effectiveness of Prompt-Based Interactions for Software Help-SeekingProceedings of the 29th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/3640543.3645200(288-303)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2024
    • (2024)Older Adults' Collaborative Learning Dynamics When Exploring Feature-Rich SoftwareProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36373788:CSCW1(1-27)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
    • (2024)Do I Just Tap My Headset?Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36314517:4(1-28)Online publication date: 12-Jan-2024
    • (2024)Mentorable Interfaces for Automated Vehicles: A New Paradigm for Designing Learnable Technology for Older AdultsProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642390(1-15)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)GenderMag Improves Discoverability in the Field, Especially for WomenProceedings of the IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/3597503.3639097(1-12)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Media

    Figures

    Other

    Tables

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media