Usability inspection is the generic name for a set of costeffective ways of evaluating user interfaces to find usability problems. They are fairly informal methods and easy to use.

Usability inspection methods

This invention relates to a system and method for interactive, adaptive, and individualized computer assisted instruction. This invention includes an agent (108) for each student (101) which adapts to its student, and provides individualized guidance to the student and controls to the augmented computer assisted instructional materials. The instructional materials of this invention are augmented to communicate the student's performance and the material's pedagogical characteristics to the agent, and to receive control from the agent. In a preferred embodiment, the agent maintains data reflecting the student's pedagogic or cognitive characteristics in a protected and portable media in the personal control of the student. Preferably, the content of the communication between the agent and the materials conforms to specified interface standards, so that the agent acts independently of the content of the particular materials. Also preferably, the agent can project using various I/O modalities integrated engaging, lifelike display personna(e).

Agent based instruction system and method

The cognitive dimensions framework is a broad-brush evaluation technique for interactive devices and for non-interactive notations. It sets out a small vocabulary of terms designed to capture the cognitively-relevant aspects of structure, and shows how they can be traded off against each other. The purpose of this paper is to propose the framework as an evaluation technique for visual programming environments. We apply it to two commercially-available dataflow languages (with further examples from other systems) and conclude that it is effective and insightful; other HCI-based evaluation techniques focus on different aspects and would make good complements. Insofar as the examples we used are representative, current VPLs are successful in achieving a good ‘closeness of match’, but designers need to consider the ‘viscosity ’ (resistance to local change) and the ‘secondary notation’ (possibility of conveying extra meaning by choice of layout, colour, etc.).

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Usability Analysis of Visual Programming Environments: A 'Cognitive Dimensions' Framework

Since the early 1960's, researchers have built a number of programming languages and environments with the intention of making programming accessible to a larger number of people. This article presents a taxonomy of languages and environments designed to make programming more accessible to novice programmers of all ages. The systems are organized by their primary goal, either to teach programming or to use programming to empower their users, and then, by each system's authors' approach, to making learning to program easier for novice programmers. The article explains all categories in the taxonomy, provides a brief description of the systems in each category, and suggests some avenues for future work in novice programming environments and languages.

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Lowering the barriers to programming: A taxonomy of programming environments and languages for novice programmers

The present invention provides a solution to the needs described above through a system and method for managing data exchange among systems in a network. The systems and methods of the present invention translate data from a system specific local format to a generic interchange format object, and vice versa, with predefined stylesheets using generic components and a system specific service components which utilize a native application programming interface of the specific local system.

Method and apparatus for managing data exchange among systems in a network

A computer based intelligent method and system for tutoring a student in an interactive application. The method and system include a computer system for selecting a mode for an adjustable teaching parameter, generating a student model, and monitoring a student interactive task based upon the teaching parameter and the student model. The method and system also include a computer system for generating an updated student model based upon a student response to the student interactive task generated, and monitoring a student interactive task based upon the teaching parameter and the updated student model.

Intelligent tutoring method and system

A technique for providing a networked, distributed tutorial application having a direct manipulation graphical user interface displayable on an Internet client node is disclosed. The application has a first portion on an Internet server node and a second portion on the Internet client node, the first portion performing application specific subject matter processing and the second portion being substantially application independent in that this second portion is applicable in a wide variety of tutoring applications for generating and maintaining an appropriate user interface during user interactions. The second portion includes an Internet browser (e.g., a hypertext mark-up language browser) that is utilized for communicating with the server node to perform application subject matter specific processing. A user being tutored may create, delete or modify graphical objects whose data structure definitions are provided by the server node, each such object having, for example, a behavior or data structure representing the semantics of a tutorial subject matter entity. Such user interactions are accumulated and utilized on the client node to maintain, independently of any communication with the server node, an interactive user interface semantically consistent with both the tutorial application and the user's interactions.

Network-based intelligent tutoring system

In this paper we describe a hypertext system we are developing for the support of reasoned argumentation: the EUCLID project. We use the project to address two general problems arising with hypertext: the problems of controlling user/document interaction, and the problem of controlling the screen. We suggest that guiding users' interaction with hypertext is difficult because of the unique form of discourse that hypertext represents, and that structuring user/document interaction can be achieved through specializing to a particular type of material and designing the hypertext system to respect the particular discourse structure characteristic of that material. EUCLID's design is tuned to the structure of reasoned discourse. The problem of screen management in EUCLID is a serious one, because our presentation of complex arguments requires mapping the complex logical relations between parts of realistic arguments onto complex spatial relations between items in the display. We describe a general system we are developing which provides this high degree of control for hypertext screen management. This system represents a constraint-based approach to hypertext, in which the items from the underlying database that are to be displayed may each contribute a number of constraints on the layout; a general constraint-satisfier then computes a screen layout that simultaneously satisfies these constraints. Each time an item is to be added to or deleted from the screen, the constraint set is adjusted and the screen layout is recomputed; thus the spatial relationships on the screen provide at all times a veridical representation of the underlying relations between displayed database items. This kind of strong screen control is demanded by hypertext applications which, like ours, are fine grained: the number of nodes and links being displayed number in the hundreds.

Constraint-based hypertext for argumentation

ChemTrains is a rule-based language in which both the condition and action of each rule are specified by pictures. A ChemTrain rule will execute when the topology rather than the geometry of a pattern matches a portion of the simulation picture, enabling rules to be drawn at a high level of abstraction. The language is independent of any specific application domain and is accessible to people with limited programming knowledge. >

ChemTrains: a language for creating behaving pictures

This article presents a case study in the use of problems in design. Problems-concrete examples of user goals whose accomplishment a system is intended to support-were used to describe the intended function of a graphical programming system and to manage the growth of the space of design alternatives for the system. Problems were also used to evaluate alternative designs: They served as bench marks for comparing both the solutions offered by differing designs and the work required of users to reach these solutions. The problem-centered design process includes a representation of design rationale in which the strengths and weaknesses of design alternatives in dealing with specific problems, rather than abstract connections among design issues, are central.

Brigham Bell

Papers

Intelligent tutoring method and system

Network-based intelligent tutoring system

Constraint-based hypertext for argumentation

ChemTrains: a language for creating behaving pictures

Problem-centered design for expressiveness and facility in a graphical programming system