Using peer tutoring in evaluating the usability of a physically interactive computer game with children

This paper presents a novel approach to usability evaluation with children called peer tutoring. Peer tutoring means that children teach other children to use the software that is evaluated. The basic philosophy behind this is to view software as a part of child's play, so that the teaching process is analogous to explaining the rules of a game such as hide and seek. If the software is easy to teach and learn, it is more likely that the amount of users increases in a social setting such as a school. The peer tutoring approach provides information about teachability and learnability of software and it also promotes communication in the test situation, compared to a test person communicating with an adult instructor. The approach has been applied to the development of a perceptually interactive user interface in QuiQui's Giant Bounce, a physically and vocally interactive computer game for 4-9 year old children. The results and experiences of using peer tutoring are promising and it has proved to be effective in detecting usability flaws and in improving the design of the game. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.