The impact of human-centered features on the usability of a programming system for children

ABSTRACT

HANDS is a new programming system for children that was designed for usability. This paper examines the effectiveness of three features of HANDS: queries, aggregate operations, and data visibility. The system is compared with a limited version that lacks these features. In the limited version, programmers can achieve the same results but must use more traditional programming techniques. Children using the full-featured HANDS system performed significantly better than their peers who used the limited version. This provides evidence that usability of programming systems can be improved by including these features.

REFERENCES

• 1: Pane, J.F. and Myers, B.A. Usability Issues in the Design of Novice Programming Systems. Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science Technical Report CMU-CS-96-132, (Pittsburgh, PA, August 1996).
• 2: John F. Pane , Brad A. Myers, Tabular and Textual Methods for Selecting Objects from a Group, Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE International Symposium on Visual Languages (VL'00), p.157, September 10-13, 2000
• 3: Pane, J.F., Myers, B.A., and Miller, L.B. Using HCI Techniques to Design a More Usable Programming System. submitted for publication (2002), http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pane/handsdesign.html.
• 4: John F. Pane , Brad A. Myers , Chotirat Ann Ratanamahatana, Studying the language and structure in non-programmers' solutions to programming problems, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, v.54 n.2, p.237-264, Feb. 2001 [doi>10.1006/ijhc.2000.0410]

INDEX TERMS

Keywords:
end-user programming, programming languages, psychology of programming, user studies