Colette Hume

Five Degrees of Happiness: Effective Smiley Face Likert Scales for Evaluating with Children

This paper focuses on achieving optimal responses through supporting childrens judgements, using Smiley Face Likert scales as a rating scale for quantitative questions in evaluations. It highlights the need to provide appropriate methods for children to communicate judgements, highlighting that the traditional Smiley Face Likert scale does not provide an appropriate method. The paper outlines a range of studies, identifying that to achieve differentiated data and full use of rating scales by children that faces with positive emotions should be used within Smiley Face Likert scales. The proposed rating method, the Five Degrees of Happiness Smiley Face Likert scale, was used in a large-scale summative evaluation of a Serious Game resulting in variance within and between children, with all points of the scale used.

A Pictorial Interaction Language for Children to Communicate with Cultural Virtual Characters

In this paper, we outline the creation of an engaging and intuitive pictorial language as an interaction modality to be used by school children aged 9 to 11 years to interact with virtual characters in a cultural learning environment. Interaction takes place on a touch screen tablet computer linked to a desktop computer on which the characters are displayed. To investigate the benefit of such an interaction style, we conducted an evaluation study to compare the pictorial interaction language with a menu-driven version for the same system. Results indicate that children found the pictorial interaction language more fun and more exciting than the menus, with users expressing a desire to interact for longer using the pictorial interaction language. Thus, we think the pictorial interaction language can help support the children’s experiential learning, allowing them to concentrate on the content of the cultural learning scenario.

Engaging with virtual characters using a pictorial interaction language

Providing fun, engaging child-centric approaches to interaction is challenging. The Pictorial Interaction Language was developed for children to communicate and interact with virtual characters in a serious game, MIXER. The design and development of the Pictorial Interaction Language is briefly outlined. Results highlight that children found interacting fun and were highly positive about the Pictorial Interaction Language.

Engaging Children in Interactive Application Evaluation

nteractive applications designed specifically for children offer great potential for education and play. However, to ascertain that the aims of applications are achieved, child-centred evaluations must be conducted. The design of any evaluation with children requires significant consideration of potential problems with comprehension, cognitive ability, response biases and study attrition. Multidisciplinary R&D project evaluation requirements are often extensive, requiring an all-encompassing and prolonged evaluation design. Discontinuity between the highly engaging interaction experience and themultitude of measures that form the evaluation poses a major issue for the evaluation of interactive applications. In response, we have developed Transmedia Evaluation, a method that aims to maintain engagement throughout the evaluation process. In this paper, the Transmedia Evaluation process is explained and applied to evaluate a learning application for children, MIXER (Moderating Interactions for Cross Cultural Empathic Relationships). Children aged 9-11 (N = 117) used the MIXER application and completed an evaluation battery including pre- and posttest questionnaires, immediate learning assessment and qualitative evaluation. Using Transmedia Evaluation to develop the MIXER evaluation resulted in complete data-sets (100%) for quantitative data (by self-regulated completion) along with rich, high quality qualitative responses. Transmedia Evaluation transformed the evaluation, with children fully engaging in and enjoying their experience. Engaging Children in Interactive Application Evaluation (PDF Download Available). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276422985_Engaging_Children_in_Interactive_Application_Evaluation [accessed Feb 8, 2016].

From Non-human to Human: Adult’s and Children’s Perceptions of Agents Varying in Humanness

While most interface agents have been designed from an adult perspective, the present paper compares adults’ and children’s views of agents that vary in their degree of humanness. Four synthetic characters ranging in appearance from non-human to very human (blob, cat, cartoon, human) were presented to adult and children perceivers and were evaluated with respect to their cognitive and emotional abilities. The visual appearance significantly influenced participants’ ratings in both age groups. However, the pattern of results was more differentiated for adult perceivers as a function of the human-likeness of the character. The findings suggest that children may rely less on human-like features in inferring agents’ capabilities which are judged along simpler cognitive and social dimensions. Implications for the design of artificial agents are discussed.