Reflection Stamps: A simple and positive method to support self-evaluation in illustration drawing

Abstract

In this research, which targets illustration drawing, we designed, implemented and evaluated a system, called ‘Reflection Stamps’, to reduce the effort and mental burden of the act of reflecting on one’s work and encourage positive reflection. When drawing an illustration, it is important for the learner to reflect positively on their own work to aid the development of their technique. However, the majority of existing reflection methods require a great deal of effort, or else involve a negative approach of indicating points for improvement, which results in the problem that the act of reflection imposes a mental burden. The proposed ‘Reflection Stamps’ system is equipped with a word stamp function that makes it easy to record evaluation and feedback on each part of an illustration. The system is furnished with a large number of stamps with positive content to encourage the learner’s sense of self-affirmation. The results of the evaluation experiment showed that the proposed system reduced the time required for reflection by 60% in comparison to the comparative method, which was a conventional method. In addition, there was a 133% increase in positive reflections when compared to the comparative method, demonstrating that the proposed system facilitated many more positive reflections. Furthermore, the system received a rating of 79 points on the System Usability Scale, confirming that it has good usability. However, it also became clear that to increase operability it is necessary to improve the placement of the stamps, and the enlarge/reduce function. In future we aim to construct a system to better support skill improvement in illustration, by increasing the variety and range of expression of the stamps to enable effective and accurate reflection.