Work-in-Progress—Domain Usefullness Experience (DUX) for LIVE-Tutor Development

Abstract

Usefulness is defined as the combination of usability with utility, and can be evaluated in the same ways as usability. A novel set of heuristics for the evaluation of usefulness is applied to a recently minted software domain definition: LIVE-Tutor. These usefulness heuristics are derived and validated according to a slightly modified version of a prescribed methodology for generating domain specific usability heuristics. These modifications, such as pairing associated development guidelines with the heuristic set to define the domain in terms of "how" to best produce applications for it, are suggested enhancements for this and other methodologies. We conducted a pilot user study to evaluate a prototype application built for the target domain by applying the first iteration results. A set of general usability heuristics was used as a control group to compare with the experimental set. This study included an added innovation: integration of evaluation tasks into the application interface to facilitate capture, logging, and reporting of results for immediate analysis. Other session analytics (such as learning-gain) were likewise generated from data logged to the application database, in order to ascertain the pedagogical utility of the application.