The think aloud method for qualitative evaluation of an intelligent tutoring system interface

In an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS), the graphical user interface is the main mode of interaction between the program and the user. Thus, it is important to evaluate its usability, which is the system's efficiency and ease of use. For these evaluations, methods such as Nielsen heuristics and questionnaires are more recurrent. However, such procedures cannot detect problems that were not foreseen by the experimenters. This paper presents a case study using the protocol Think Aloud for the usability evaluation of the ITS PAT2Math. The case study showed that the protocol allows to obtain previously not foreseen information in relation to both functional questions of the graphical interface and to the emotions of the users. Think Aloud revealed to be an interesting approach to a formative evaluation of ITSs and other computer learning environments.