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Heuristics to Evaluate Interactive Systems for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

In this paper, we adapted and expanded a set of guidelines, also known as heuristics, to evaluate the usability of software to now be appropriate for software aimed at children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We started from the heuristics developed by Nielsen in 1990 and developed a modified s...

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Autores principales: Khowaja, Kamran, Salim, Siti Salwah
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4510389/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26196385
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0132187
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author Khowaja, Kamran
Salim, Siti Salwah
author_facet Khowaja, Kamran
Salim, Siti Salwah
author_sort Khowaja, Kamran
collection PubMed
description In this paper, we adapted and expanded a set of guidelines, also known as heuristics, to evaluate the usability of software to now be appropriate for software aimed at children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We started from the heuristics developed by Nielsen in 1990 and developed a modified set of 15 heuristics. The first 5 heuristics of this set are the same as those of the original Nielsen set, the next 5 heuristics are improved versions of Nielsen's, whereas the last 5 heuristics are new. We present two evaluation studies of our new heuristics. In the first, two groups compared Nielsen’s set with the modified set of heuristics, with each group evaluating two interactive systems. The Nielsen’s heuristics were assigned to the control group while the experimental group was given the modified set of heuristics, and a statistical analysis was conducted to determine the effectiveness of the modified set, the contribution of 5 new heuristics and the impact of 5 improved heuristics. The results show that the modified set is significantly more effective than the original, and we found a significant difference between the five improved heuristics and their corresponding heuristics in the original set. The five new heuristics are effective in problem identification using the modified set. The second study was conducted using a system which was developed to ascertain if the modified set was effective at identifying usability problems that could be fixed before the release of software. The post-study analysis revealed that the majority of the usability problems identified by the experts were fixed in the updated version of the system.
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spelling pubmed-45103892015-07-24 Heuristics to Evaluate Interactive Systems for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Khowaja, Kamran Salim, Siti Salwah PLoS One Research Article In this paper, we adapted and expanded a set of guidelines, also known as heuristics, to evaluate the usability of software to now be appropriate for software aimed at children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We started from the heuristics developed by Nielsen in 1990 and developed a modified set of 15 heuristics. The first 5 heuristics of this set are the same as those of the original Nielsen set, the next 5 heuristics are improved versions of Nielsen's, whereas the last 5 heuristics are new. We present two evaluation studies of our new heuristics. In the first, two groups compared Nielsen’s set with the modified set of heuristics, with each group evaluating two interactive systems. The Nielsen’s heuristics were assigned to the control group while the experimental group was given the modified set of heuristics, and a statistical analysis was conducted to determine the effectiveness of the modified set, the contribution of 5 new heuristics and the impact of 5 improved heuristics. The results show that the modified set is significantly more effective than the original, and we found a significant difference between the five improved heuristics and their corresponding heuristics in the original set. The five new heuristics are effective in problem identification using the modified set. The second study was conducted using a system which was developed to ascertain if the modified set was effective at identifying usability problems that could be fixed before the release of software. The post-study analysis revealed that the majority of the usability problems identified by the experts were fixed in the updated version of the system. Public Library of Science 2015-07-21 /pmc/articles/PMC4510389/ /pubmed/26196385 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0132187 Text en © 2015 Khowaja, Salim http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Khowaja, Kamran
Salim, Siti Salwah
Heuristics to Evaluate Interactive Systems for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
title Heuristics to Evaluate Interactive Systems for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
title_full Heuristics to Evaluate Interactive Systems for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
title_fullStr Heuristics to Evaluate Interactive Systems for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
title_full_unstemmed Heuristics to Evaluate Interactive Systems for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
title_short Heuristics to Evaluate Interactive Systems for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
title_sort heuristics to evaluate interactive systems for children with autism spectrum disorder (asd)
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4510389/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26196385
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0132187
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