Configuration Tool
5.3 Usability Study
5.3 Usability Study
The tool offers all functionalities for configuring applications without pro-gramming. A usability study was conducted in order to evaluate if users without programming skills or technical expertise are able to use this tool.
It is expected that especially elder people might have more difficulties in using new technologies. However, there are a variety of applications for robot companions which deal with issues especially concerning the elderly such as home care. Due to that reason, it is important to include the elderly into the development process of robot companions.
Furthermore it is expected, that it is easier for younger people to use technologies that the elderly are able to use than the other way round. Due to this reason, the presented usability study was conducted with participants at the age of 40 or older. In total 5 participants (2 male; 3 female) were recruited.
5.4 General Procedure
Each participant was told to solve an openly designed scenario that consisted of creating two different profiles, one for the summer and one for the win-ter. There were no further restrictions regarding the stimuli or actions the participants had to use.
The study focused exclusively on the usability of the configuration tool and did not include any interaction with the robot. During the whole procedure the participants were told to think aloud and the interaction was recorded (screen and audio) for subsequent analyses. An examiner was present while
the participants tried to solve the task.
A limited range of actions and conditions from which the participants were able to choose was given. When the menu item Actions was active, the participants could choose from 9 different actions which were: clear the snow, scrape the ice off, brush the terrace, water flowers, brush the leaves, plant flowers, hide Easter eggs, wash up and vacuum.
For the definition of stimuli, the participants were able to choose from four different conditions which were: right foot is pressed, left foot is pressed, right hand is pressed and left hand is pressed. Each of the selectable conditions represented a user friendly description of an entry for the XML file. For instance, the choice of the condition left foot is pressed led to the entry within the XML file shown in listing 5.1.
The user did not have to define how the robot can obtain rewards as the tool offers a default configuration when the menu item Rewards is active.
Here, the participant was able to see that the robot can be rewarded by pressing one of the tactile sensors on its head (see figure 5.3). As mentioned before, it was not specified which stimuli the participants had to create or which actions they had to use.
Subsequent to the task, each subject was interviewed in order to gather further information. Finally, the participant was fully debriefed and thanked for the participation. The results are presented in the following section
5.5 Results and Discussion
The analysis of the recorded material and the interviews reveals that the participants had problems to solve the task on their own. Although expla-nations and video tutorials about the semantic meaning of every step were available, the subjects still had difficulties to understand the learning concept.
Especially, the meaning and definition of stimuli led to major problems.
It was observed that the assistance in the form of help text and videos was only used partially. Furthermore, some participants did not understand that the videos only show examples of how to configure the robot. Beside the problems concerning the understanding of learning concept, difficulties when using the tool were observed. These difficulties partially result from the missing understanding of the learning concept. In general, the participants often were confused about their progress in solving the task. Based on these findings it can be concluded, that the offered assistance of the current tool is not sufficient and needs to be improved. Especially, the placement and the kind of assistance have to be revised in order to ensure that the users understand the learning concept.
Maybe it is advisable that the user has to solve a tutorial when the tool is started the first time. At each step a specific task has to be solved correctly before the next step becomes available. This tutorial may include non-optional videos in order to ensure that the assistance is used. Furthermore, better feedback mechanisms are necessary to inform the users about their progress.
Although the use of the tool still seems to be too difficult for people of this age group, it offers a suitable basis for further research. It is part of further research if the use of better feedback mechanisms and assistance helps to overcome the observed difficulties. Furthermore, studies which include other age groups are of great interest in order to evaluate which functional range the tool should offer for different age groups.
In order to focus on the usability of the tool within this study, there was no interaction with robot included. It is assumed that a previous interaction with a robot performing a sample application could improve the subjects’
5.5. Results and Discussion 99
capabilities of using the configuration tool. This is a point of contact for subsequent research. Due to the fact that new applications can be created very fast and easily with this tool, it can assist psychologists to create studies concerning human-robot interaction.
In the following chapters two studies which were conducted to gain in-formation about the decision making framework concerning human-robot interaction aspects are presented. For both studies, it is possible to create the interaction scenario using the presented configuration tool. As the tool had not been finished at the time when the studies presented in the following were conducted, the XML configuration files were created manually which is not necessary in the future anymore.
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