Abstract
The development of Augmented Reality (AR) systems is creating new challenges and opportunities for the designers of e-learning systems. The mix of real and virtual requires appropriate interaction techniques that have to be evaluated with users in order to avoid usability problems. Formative usability aims at finding usability problems as early as possible in the development life cycle and is suitable to support the development of such novel interactive systems. This work presents an approach to the user-centered usability evaluation of an e-learning scenario for Biology developed on an Augmented Reality educational platform. The evaluation has been carried on during and after a summer school held within the ARiSE research project. The basic idea was to perform usability evaluation twice. In this respect, we conducted user testing with a small number of students during the summer school in order to get a fast feedback from users having good knowledge in Biology. Then, we repeated the user testing in different conditions and with a relatively larger number of representative users. In this paper we describe both experiments and compare the usability evaluation results.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bach, C., Scapin, D.: Obstacles and perspectives for evaluating mixed reality systems usability. In: Proceedings of Mixer Workshop - IUI-CADUI 2004, Funchal, pp. 72–79 (2004)
Bowman, D., Gabbard, J., Hix, D.: A Survey of Usability Evaluation in Virtual Environments: Classification and Comparison of Methods. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 11(4), 404–424 (2002)
Costabile, M.F., De Angeli, A., Lanzilotti, R., Ardito, C., Buono, P., Pederson, T.: Explore! Possibilities and Challenges of Mobile Learning. In: Proc. of CHI 2008, pp. 145–154. ACM Press, New York (2008)
Coutrix, C., Nigay, L.: Mixed Reality: A Model of Mixed Interaction. In: Proceedings of Advanced Visual Interfaces, Venezia, pp. 59–64. ACM Press, New York (2006)
Davis, F.D., Bagozzi, R.P., Warshaw, P.R.: User Acceptance of Computer Technology: A Comparison of Two Theoretical Models. Management Science 35(8), 982–1003 (1989)
Dillon, A., Morris, M.: User acceptance of new information technology: theories and models. In: Williams, M. (ed.) Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, vol. 31, pp. 3–32 (1996); Medford NJ: Information Today
Gabbard, J., Hix, D., Edward Swan II, J.: User-Centered Design and Evaluation of Virtual Environments. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 19(6), 51–59 (1999)
Hix, D., Gabbard, J., Swan, E., Livingston, M., Herer, T., Julier, S., Baillot, Y., Brown, D.: A Cost-Effective Usability Evaluation Progression for Novel Interactive Systems. In: Proc. of Hawaii Intl. Conference on Systems Sciences, Track 9, p. 90276c. IEEE, Los Alamitos (2004)
Hornbaek, K.: Current practice in measuring usability: Challenges to usability studies and research. Intl. J. Human Computer Studies 64, 79–102 (2006)
Hvannberg, E.T., Law, L.-C.: Classification of usability problems (CUP) scheme. In: Proceedings of Interact 2003, Zurich, Switzerland, September 1-5 (2003)
ISO/DIS 9241-11:1994 Information Technology – Ergonomic Requirements for Office Work with visual display terminal (VDTs) - Guidance on usability (1994)
ISO 9126-1:2001 Software Engineering - Software product quality. Part 1: Quality Model (2001)
Kaufmann, H., Dunser, A.: Summary of Usability Evaluation of an Educational Augmented Reality Application. In: Shumaker, R. (ed.) HCII 2007 and ICVR 2007. LNCS, vol. 4563, pp. 660–669. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Jeon, S., Shim, H., Kim, G.: Viewpoint Usability for Desktop Augmented Reality. The International Journal of Virtual Reality 5(3), 33–39 (2006)
Scriven, M.: Evaluation thesaurus, 4th edn. Sage Publications, Newbury Park (1991)
Sun, H., Zhang, P.: The role of moderating factors in user technology acceptance. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 64, 53–78 (2006)
Swann II, J.E., Gabbard, J.L.: Survey of User-Based Experimentation in Augmented Reality. In: Proceedings of 1st International Conference on Virtual Reality, Las Vegas, Nevada, July 22-27 (2005)
Theofanos, M., Quesenbery, W.: Towards the Design of Effective Formative Test Reports. Journal of Usability Studies 1(1), 27–45 (2005)
Venkatesh, V., Davis, F.D., Morris, M.G.: Dead or Alive? The Development, Trajectory And Future Of Technology Adoption Research. Journal of the AIS 8(4), 267–286 (2007)
Wind, J., Riege, K., Bogen, M.: Spinnstube®: A Seated Augmented Reality Display System. In: Virtual Environments, IPT-EGVE – EG/ACM Symposium Proceedings, pp. 17–23 (2007)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Pribeanu, C., Balog, A., Iordache, D.D. (2009). Measuring the Usability of Augmented Reality e-Learning Systems: A User–Centered Evaluation Approach. In: Cordeiro, J., Shishkov, B., Ranchordas, A., Helfert, M. (eds) Software and Data Technologies. ICSOFT 2008. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 47. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-05201-9_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-05201-9_14
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-05200-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-05201-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)