A principled evaluation for a principled idea garden

Will Jernigan, Amber Horvath, Michael Lee, Margaret Burnett, Taylor Cuilty, Sandeep Kuttal, Anicia Peters, Irwin Kwan, Faezeh Bahmani, Andrew Ko

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

25 Scopus citations

Abstract

Many systems are designed to help novices who want to learn programming, but few support those who are not interested in learning (more) programming. This paper targets the subset of end-user programmers (EUPs) in this category. We present a set of principles on how to help EUPs like this learn just a little when they need to overcome a barrier. We then instantiate the principles in a prototype and empirically investigate the principles in two studies: a formative think-aloud study and a pair of summer camps attended by 42 teens. Among the surprising results were the complementary roles of implicitly actionable hints versus explicitly actionable hints, and the importance of both context-free and context-sensitive availability. Under these principles, the camp participants required significantly less in-person help than in a previous camp to learn the same amount of material in the same amount of time.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2015 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, VL/HCC 2015
EditorsScott D. Fleming, Zhen Li, Claudia Ermel
PublisherIEEE Computer Society
Pages235-243
Number of pages9
ISBN (Electronic)9781467374576
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 14 2015
Externally publishedYes
EventIEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, VL/HCC 2015 - Atlanta, United States
Duration: Oct 18 2015Oct 22 2015

Publication series

NameProceedings of IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, VL/HCC
Volume2015-December
ISSN (Print)1943-6092
ISSN (Electronic)1943-6106

Other

OtherIEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, VL/HCC 2015
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityAtlanta
Period10/18/1510/22/15

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computational Theory and Mathematics
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Software

Keywords

  • End-user programming
  • problem solving

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