Digital Library Interfaces for Children: The Effects of Visual Navigation on Usability Glenda Revelle, Benjamin B. Bederson, Allison Druin, Dana Campbell, Allison Farber, Juan Pablo Hourcade, Juhyun Lee, Yoshifumi Takayama Teachers and students of Yorktown Elementary School Bowie, Maryland

University of Maryland, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory SearchKids: A Digital Library Interface for Children  Completing third and final year of NSF-funded Digital Libraries project  Visual interface to digital libraries for young children (early elementary)  Enables children to search a multimedia database of information about animals

University of Maryland, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory This Year’s Focus  Continued our collaborative design process, including children, teachers, and researchers  Currently evaluating the effectiveness of SearchKids visual interface  Compares 2 nd and 3 rd graders use of SearchKids to more traditional, less visual alternatives

University of Maryland, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory [Demo] “Original SearchKids” “Traditional”

University of Maryland, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory Research Design  Goal: understand effectiveness of SearchKids interface features  140 students from Yorktown Elem. School (half-way done)  Independent Variable: Interface - traditional AND one of: Full SearchKids SearchKids with no images SearchKids with no animation SearchKids with neither images nor animation Grade Gender  Dependent Variables: Speed Accuracy Subjective Satisfaction

University of Maryland, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory Research Design (cont.)  Children asked to find as many items as possible in 15 minutes (items spoken by test administrator)  Search tasks include specific animals (e.g., dog) and categories of animals (e.g., something that lives in water)  Half used traditional interface first; half used SearchKids version first

University of Maryland, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory Preliminary Results  Preliminary analysis on Original SearchKids vs. Traditional (with ten 2 nd graders and eight 3 rd graders)  Number of kids tested too small to know about statistical significance yet, but some patterns are emerging

University of Maryland, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory Preliminary Results: Search Outcomes  Looking at three measures: Total # items completed during session # “right” items found # “wrong” items found  Grade effect for total # items completed: 3 rd graders found 12 items 2 nd graders found 9 items

University of Maryland, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory Preliminary Results: Search Outcomes (cont.)  For # “right” items found: 2 nd graders submit more right answers with SearchKids 3 rd graders submit more right answers with traditional But, this effect occurs only on category search tasks  For # “wrong” items found 2 nd graders submit more wrong answers with traditional 3 rd graders submit more wrong answers with SearchKids Again, this effect occurs on category search tasks

University of Maryland, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory Preliminary Results: User Satisfaction  Original SearchKids rated as being more useful than the traditional, text- based approach  Boys rate SearchKids as being less “fun to use” if it has no images, whereas girls rate it as less fun without animations

University of Maryland, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory (Preliminary) Conclusions  SearchKids enables young children to perform complex queries more effectively than traditional text searches  In other situations, traditional text search proves more effective

University of Maryland, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory (Preliminary) Conclusions (cont.)  Young children perceive a visual search interface to be more useful and more fun to use than a traditional text interface  Therefore, your choice of interface should depend on the age of the children, and their tasks.