Exploratory study of usability for children in Colombia
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Abstract
The usability testing is considered an important element in relation to the design of Web sites. Each Web page provides a service and is created with specific objectives as entertaining, communicating, doing business, and teaching, among others. But it is important to identify whether the user experience when browsing the site, actually allows meeting the purposes for which it was designed. Following this approach, the concept of usability emerges in terms of making something work well, i.e. a person with capacity and average experience (or even below average) may be able to use something with a specific purpose without feeling completely frustrated (Krug, 2006). We should not ignore that usability problems also affect children, since they are not able to overcome some technical problems and fail to understand error messages, opting to go to other websites. This study focused on evaluating the usability of an educational website for children. The evaluation techniques, such as “Thinking out loud” and “User Test”, were applied to a total of 20 children from two different educational institutions. Results permit to propose the redesign of educational Website in order to improve the usability and the educational experience of children
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