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1. NO MENU FLIP buttons do and what Yes and No mean Displays a series of screens navigated by the Left and Right Buttons Each screen is part of a table that lists the first line of text on the front of cards in descending order of the ratio of the number of No s to the number of Yes es The first screen lists the first 6 entries and so on Tl Basic menu that appears after the cards left and cards re introduced message screen when the user walks off the last card of this pass of the stack Allows the user to e shuffle cards remaining NO cards amp re introduced cards and repeat the stack in order to keep studying e pick a new stack to study 56 prgmSHUFFLE prgmQUIT PIC 1 PIC 0 e view Statistics e read the help screens e quit Viewer Called when the user walks off the last card of this pass of the stack prgmSHUFFLE first try to re introduce hidden cards cards with the corresponding element in List SHOW set to 0 If the user had been pressing Yes to a card exclusively No count is zero the probability of re introduction is 20 or 1 in every 5 passes where the card hidden Otherwise the probability of re introduction of a hidden card is the ratio of Yes es to the total number of Yes es and No s presses For example if a card is currently hidden and the user pressed Yes once and No three times the probability of the card being re introduced is 75 If the user pressed Yes th
2. VERSION FUNCTIONALITY Version 1 Next card flip quit low fidelity internal only no user testing Version 2 Compare different screen clearing mechanisms Flip on up amp down arrows Next and Previous on right amp left arrows Button labels are Help Yes Shaky No lt blank gt Compare borders to differentiate front from back and different word spacing Two screens of help 2 Quit to quit the app End of stack message Version 3 Shaky button eliminated clear by screen retained Border on front no border on back Button labels are help menu yes no Pressing Yes for a card hides that card in the next shuffle Next and No don t Instructions and help button are identical Start menu at beginning of app Use last stack Pick new stack Instructions Quit Middle menu reached from menu button Continue Pick new stack Statistics blank Instructions Quit Tells how many cards are left Shuffle and repeat Pick new stack Instructions Quit Version 4 Shuffle reintroduces cards with a 20 chance Help Instructions has 4 screens Button labels are help menu yes no flip Version 5 More info in help screens Button labels are help menu yes no flip Statistics screen lists all cards Sorted by ratio of yes to no answers Displayed with number of yes and no answers Reintroduction of a card Chance depen
3. chapter reviews printed in their textbook Because the flashcards are digital and the calculators easily networkable a student who writes a stack may share that stack of cards with any number of his classmates He may even share his flashcards with other students over the WWW By enabling such a means of generating and sharing files the Flash Card Viewer and Maker are poised to create a user community who regularly author and exchange flashcard content Enhanced learning support The Flash Card Viewer is better able than traditional flashcards to present topics in an order and an amount that improve learning Furthermore we know from the educational literature that the very act of writing your own flashcards is an educational experience in and of itself By allowing for multiple navigational methods within the application the Flash Card Viewer supports multiple learning styles In Conclusion The Flash Card Viewer and Flash Card Maker are two useable and useful study tools They have a clear application in supporting the study habits of high school students Furthermore students are already familiar with the concept of paper flashcards and are convinced of their utility Finally students like them I think it is good will use this to study Can you have this on the 82 or 85 high school student commenting on the Viewer application I like it It looks cool high school student commenting on the Maker application
4. 1 Take the 0 from element 6 of LIN2 The 0 means line 6 is a blank line To find the text for line 7 of the back side of card 1 Take the 0 from element 7 of LIN2 The 0 means line 7 is a blank line The second set of 7 numbers in LIN2 is 3 0 4 5 0 0 The numbers correspond directly to lines 1 to 7 of the backside of card 2 To find the text for line 1 of the back side of card 2 Take the 3 from element 8 of LIN2 Go to element 3 in POS2 That number is 27 The text for line 1 begins at position 27 in Str2 and ends at position 36 36 is the list element after 27 in POS2 To find the text for line 2 of the back side of card 2 Take the 0 from element 9 of LIN2 The 0 means line 2 is a blank line To find the text for line 3 of the back side of card 2 Take the 4 from element 10 of LIN2 Go to element 4 in POS2 That number is 36 52 The text for line 3 begins at position 36 in Str2 and ends at position 58 58 is the list element after 36 in POS2 To find the text for line 4 of the back side of card 2 Take the 5 from element 11 of LIN2 Go to element 5 in POS2 That number is 58 The text for line 4 begins at position 58 in Str2 and ends at position 64 64 is the list element after 58 in POS2 To find the text for line 5 of the back side of card 2 Take the 0 from element 12 of LIN2 The 0 means line 5 is a blank line To find the text for line 6 of the back side o
5. Can take this home high school student s closing question We recommend that TI continue developing these applications beyond the scope of this project We feel that with another iteration of testing and development the Flash Card Viewer and Flash Card Maker will become valuable tools for high school students in non math and science subjects PART Il Detailed Descriptions Introduction This section is meant to provide evidence for and explain the reasoning behind many of the interface decisions that lead us to the following designs Our belief is that with both the working prototypes of the Flash Card Viewer and the Flash Card Maker and this document whomever picks up this project will be able to produce the next version of this software For each design decision we try to explain the direction we chose in three steps First we give a brief description of the feature Next we explain the evidence for the feature normally through user testing or another usability technique Finally we try to point out any pitfalls we worked around during the course of our research so that future authors might avoid some of the mistakes we made Following the description of both the Viewer and Maker we present a section of future work that includes questions and interesting issues which we were unable to address in the scope of this project Any person continuing this project should give serious attention to the issues and concerns raised in t
6. ROMANIAN HUNGARIAN line 4 GERMAN line 5 line 6 50 line 7 Contents of string Str2 The numbers are to help the reader see the positions of the characters WELLINGTONENGLISH MAORIBUCHARESTROMANIAN HUNGARIAN GERMANZ 12345678901234567890 1234567890 1234567890 12345678901 2345678901234567890 1 The final Z in Str2 is a place keeper that makes finding the contents of the last sub string in Str2 no different than finding the contents of any other sub string in Str2 2 There are 3 spaces in Str2 for each word space On the calculator that will translate to 3 pixels of word spacing POS2 contains the starting position of each sub string Each sub string is the contents of a single line of text on a card Blank lines on a card are not represented in either Str2 or POS2 Blank lines are represented in LIN2 see description of LIN2 on this page Contents of POS2 1 11 27 36 58 64 WELLINGTON starts at 1 ENGLISH MAORI starts at 11 BUCHAREST starts at 27 ROMANIAN HUGARIAN starts at 36 GERMAN starts at 58 the final Z is at 64 SPC2 contains the number of spaces that precede the text on the line Since all lines of text are left justified in this example SPC2 is all zeros Contents of SPC2 0 0 0 0 0 WELLINGTON has 0 leading spaces ENGLISH MAORI has 0 leading spaces BUCHAREST has 0 leading spaces ROMANIAN HUGARIAN has 0 leading spaces GERMAN has 0 leading spaces
7. Widner R L Jr Smith S M amp Graziano W G 1996 The effects of demand characteristics on the reporting of tip of the tongue and feeling of knowing states American Journal of Psychology 109 4 525 538 40 Appendix B Usability Heuristics Visibility of system status The system should always keep users informed about what is going on through appropriate feedback within reasonable time Match between system and the real world The system should speak the users language with words phrases and concepts familiar to the user rather than system oriented terms Follow real world conventions making information appear in a natural and logical order User control and freedom Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked emergency exit to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue Support undo and redo Consistency and standards Users should not have to wonder whether different words situations or actions mean the same thing Follow platform conventions Error prevention Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place Recognition rather than recall Make objects actions and options visible The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate Flexibility
8. a different order each time they are viewed is an effort to avoid learning order effects See the section in Part of this report regarding research into the Psychology Literature for more information Pitfall This feature makes it difficult to look up a specific word in the set of flash cards on the calculator Solution See the future work section of this document 20 Flash Card Maker Manual Getting Started 1 Double click on FlashMkr5 0 to open the Flash Card Maker 2 Go to File gt New Flashcard Set to create a new stack The stack starts with a blank card You can immediately start typing text on the front of the flash card 3 To start typing on the back of the card click in the Back of Card window or press the tab key 4 To make a new card click on the NEW button or press tab to highlight the NEW button and then press Enter Making New Cards You can insert a new card into the stack in one of three ways e Click the NEW button on the control panel or e Go to Cards gt Insert New Card or e Press Ctrl N The application will insert the new card in the next stack position following the one that is being displayed If you are looking at the last card in the stack the new card will be added to end of the stack Deleting Cards Like inserting you can remove a card from the stack in one of three ways e Click the DEL button on the control panel or e Go to Cards gt Delete This Card or e Press Ctrl D
9. and Code modules Module Name Brief Description prgmVIEWER Main program loop Button presses direct program flow within prgmVIEWER or call Code modules listed below prgmVIEWER keeps track of the Yes and No counts clears and displays the appropriate card view PIC 0 or PIC 1 and displays the message screen that tells the user the number of cards left to study when the user walks off the last card in this pass of the stack 54 prgmPICKSTAC prgmINITDATn where n 1 2 3 prgmiNITMISC prgmDISPFRNT Whenever the user presses Yes for a card the corresponding element in List YES is incremented by 1 The card is hidden in the next pass of the stack by setting the corresponding element in List SHOW to 0 Whenever the user presses No for a card the corresponding element in List NO is incremented by 1 The card is unhidden in the next pass of the stack by setting the corresponding element in List SHOW to 1 Pressing the Left or Right arrow buttons does not change Lists YES NO and SHOW and therefore have no effect on hiding un hiding and re introduction of cards The initial menu has two versions depending on whether or not the last viewed last used stack is available Currently this determination is hard coded the value of variable S is checked We expect the assembler version could track this information in a different way TI Basic menu that lists the stacks available for studying on the calculator Currently the menu
10. and efficiency of use Accelerators unseen by the novice user may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users Allow users to tailor frequent actions Aesthetic and minimalist design Dialogues should not contain information that is irrelevant or rarely needed Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility Help users recognize diagnose and recover from errors Error messages should be expressed in plain language no codes precisely indicate the problem and constructively suggest a solution Help and documentation Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation it may be necessary to provide help and documentation Any such information should be easy to search focused on the user s task list concrete steps to be carried out and not be too large 41 Appendix C Example User Test Protocol Instructions Collect consent forms If they don t have their consent form we will have to reschedule Introduce Study The point of today s study is to discover how high school students may interact with an electronic flash card application running on a TI 83 Plus graphing calculator The application works like normal flash cards in that you have the ability to flip between front and back sides of the card and to move from one card to the n
11. of design and user testing in late June Think Aloud Usability Studies with high school students were scheduled each Monday and Thursday for a span of approximately six weeks Changes suggested by a day s user tests were implemented for the next round of testing We solicited high school students from several local high schools Males 18 10 public 8 private Females 8 4 public 4 private Testing took place in a usability lab on the Carnegie Mellon University campus equipped with three video cameras and video mixing equipment which enabled us to capture a picture in picture of the calculator screen and the users physical interactions with the calculator simultaneously The calculator display was projected onto a wall and the projected image was recorded so that the users activities were not inhibited by attempts to capture what was displayed directly from the calculator screen itself Both the Flash Card Maker and Viewer applications were tested using the Think Aloud Usability Study technique See Appendix C for an example user test protocol Feedback and Conclusion The combined functionality of the Flash Card Maker and Flash Card Viewer provides the end user with several advantages over traditional paper flash cards Easily created replicated and shared The flash cards are easily created replicated and shared Students can easily generate their own content from scratch or from pre existing sources such as teacher handouts or end of
12. of future prototypes Mapping navigational tasks flip next card previous card onto the arrow keys without explicit labels is acceptable for users as long as instructions are provided User comments indicate that as long as the front and back are visually distinctive in some way labeling them explicitly is unnecessary Having a separate screen for self report was annoying for users but putting the self report in the status line didn t give novices enough information about the purpose of the self report Self report is better than chance Therefore it is an acceptable way to gauge learning so it was not eliminated from the design Learning support that is not possible using paper flash cards such as random presentation of cards should be supported Interface Evaluation We employed two very different techniques for interface evaluation throughout the course of this project Heuristic Evaluation and the Think Aloud Usability Study A discussion of each technique follows Heuristic Evaluation According to Jakob Nielsen s website Nielsen 1999 The goal of heuristic evaluation is to find the usability problems in the design so that they can be attended to as part of an iterative design process Heuristic evaluation involves having a small set of evaluators examine the interface and judge its compliance with recognized usability principles the heuristics This technique actually uses two techniques in combinatio
13. that he could double check his work Notes on subject 18 Pitfall Thinking we could make navigating to the first and last card as accessible as navigation to the next or previous card we testing a version of the Flash Card Maker that included a First Card and Last Card button Through user testing we found that the addition of these buttons caused much confusion users often could not correctly identify their functionality and often clicked the wrong button We removed the buttons from the screen and left the functionality to the Cards menu 31 Finding in Flash Card Maker File Edit Cards Link Cut Copy Card 18 of 233 Paste Find Ctrl F Find what Feature Search for a specific string within stacks Reasoning Asked for specifically by users the find dialogue box makes several editing tasks easier Future Work Add the ability to replace found text should improve these tasks further 32 Go to Card Front OF Card 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 3 AFGHANISTAN FE ALBANIA ALGERIA AMERICAN SAMOA ANDORRA ANGOLA ANGUILLA ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA ARGENTINA ARMENIA ARUBA AUSTRALIA AUSTRIA AZERBAIJAN THE BAHAMAS BAHRAIN b Feature Provide a listview of cards with their numbers and text Reasoning Navigating through large stacks frustrated many subjects Furthermore searching tasks were hampered by the lack of a holistic view of the stack A lis
14. A dialog box will come up asking you to verify that you want to delete the card Click Yes if you do want to delete the card No if you want to cancel the operation The displayed card will be deleted and the rest of the stack will shift up to fill the hole Moving Between Cards Like the viewer the Flash Card Maker uses arrow keys to move between cards e To see the next card in the stack use the right arrow on the control panel or go to Cards gt Next Card 21 e To return to the previous card in the stack use the left arrow on the control panel or go to Cards gt Previous Card e To jump to the first card in the stack go to Cards gt First Card e To jump to the last card in the stack go to Cards gt Last Card Searching for Cards Search functions have been included in the Flash Card Maker to make it easier to go through a big stack e To search for a card containing a particular word Go to Edit gt Find or press Ctrl F and enter the word you are looking for The Flash Card Maker will jump to the first card containing the word e To search for a card in a list format Go to Cards gt Go to Card or press Ctrl G The application will bring up a box containing a scrollable list of cards in the stack Double click on the card you want to see Saving and Loading Flash Card Stacks e To save the card stack under the same file name Go to File gt Save or press Ctrl S e To save the card stack unde
15. ARD F NEST CARD 4 HERNU NEAT FAGE F Help Page 1 SELECTING HELF HILL SHOW THESE INSTRUCTION SELECTING MENU HILL SELECTING HELF HILL SHOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS SELECTING MENU HILL HOVE TO A MENU OF OFTION 1 FREY FAGE NEAT FAGE F Help Page 2 DEFINITION OR ANSHERS ARE Of THE EACK OF THE CARDS SELECTING CFLIF HILL HOVE TO A MENU OF OFTION TURN OVER THE CARD 1 FREY FAGE NEAT FAGE F Help Page 4 4 FREY FAGE NEAT FAGE F Help Page 3 YES AND NO HELF YOU STUDY THEY INFLUENCE HOW OFTEN A CARD APPEAR HHEN YOU LEYES I KAOH THIS CARD iNO I NEED HORE FRACTICE FRESS YES OF NO WHEN YOU ARE READY FOR THE SHUFFLE AND REPEAT THE TACK NEAT CARD 1 FREY FAGE NEAT FAGE F 4 FREY FAGE FINISH F Help Page 5 Help Page 6 Feature The Flash Card Viewer has a sequence of six screens of instructions which users should read before beginning to use the application Reasoning While our user tests demonstrated that the calculator application is useable without reading the instructions it is difficult for the user to understand the purpose of the Yes No buttons without reading the online help The instructions are available Pitfall Students who don t read the help will miss important functionality of the Flash Card Viewer Solution We attempted to lessen the impact of not reading the instructions on users by making the help available from every screen and menu in the
16. HELP variable Z indicates if help was requested from the Card View or from a menu This determines the appropriate label to use for the first help screens n Code module PICKSTAC variable Z indicates if the user did picked a new stack to study or aborted the action and wanted to return to the previous menu Variable N indicates the number of cards in the stack currently in use Code module INITMISC uses N to setup Lists SORT YES NO SHOW SCOR Variable T indicates which side of the card is showing T 1 means to show front of the card T 0 means to show back of the card Variable C indicates the element in list ORDR whose value is the card index of the card being shown Variable K stores the key code of the last button pressed List SHOW indicates which cards are hidden SHOW c 1 means to show card c in the next pass SHOW c 0 means to hide card c in the next pass List ORDR contains the card indexes to show in this pass in the order in which they will be shown List YES and List NO keep track of the number of times Yes and No are pressed for each card in the stack List SCOR is used in Code module STATS to contain the ratio of corresponding elements values in List No to List Yes The values in List SCOR are for sorting the statistics table List SORT is used in Code module STATS to contain the sorted card indexes in descending order of the ratio of number of No s to Yes es for that card Program structure
17. LIN2 relates the sub strings in Str2 and POS2 to specific lines on the card Each side of a card holds 7 lines of text some of which are blank lines The numbers in LIN2 are in groups of 7 The first 7 numbers relate to the contents of card 1 the second 7 numbers relate to the contents of card 2 etc LIN2 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 3 0 4 5 0 0 0 The first set of 7 numbers in LIN2 is 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 These numbers correspond directly to lines 1 to 7 of the back side of card 1 To find the text for line 1 of the back side of card 1 Take the 1 from element 1 of LIN2 Go to element 1 in POS2 That number is 1 51 The text for line 1 begins at position 1 in Str2 and ends at position 11 11 is the list element after 1 in POS2 To find the text for line 2 of the back side of card 1 Take the 0 from element 2 of LIN2 The 0 means line 2 is a blank line To find the text for line 3 of the back side of card 1 Take the 2 from element 3 of LIN2 Go to element 2 in POS2 That number is 11 The text for line 3 begins at position 11 in Str2 and ends at position 27 27 is the list element after 11 in POS2 To find the text for line 4 of the back side of card 1 Take the 0 from element 4 of LIN2 The 0 means line 4 is a blank line To find the text for line 5 of the back side of card 1 Take the 0 from element 5 of LIN2 The 0 means line 5 is a blank line To find the text for line 6 of the back side of card
18. O to and will show those again the next time you go through the stack The application will also remember the cards you answered YES to and will remove them from the stack However the application will occasionally put the YES cards back into the stack so that you don t forget those answers while you are busy looking at the NO cards YOU HAVE 4 CARDS LEFT TO TUDY When you reach the end of the stack the application will let you know how many NO cards you have left and how many RE INTROOUCING YES cards are going back into the stack The screen will gt CARDS look like that in Figure 4 End of Stack Fig 4 End of stack Every time you finish a stack you will get a menu of options SHUFFLE REPEAT Reorders and restarts the current stack Note this option will not appear if you don t have any NO cards left i e you answered YES to all the cards in the current stack PICK NEW STACK Lets you select a new flash card stack to study STATISTICS Displays a list of which cards you said YES or NO to INSTRUCTIONS Brings up a short summary of key commands QUIT Exits the flash card viewer You can also access this menu from any card by pressing the MENU TRACE button 14 Statistics The application keeps track of which cards you said YES and NO to e Select STATISTICS from the menu to look at a report of your YES and NO cards You will get a list similar to Figure 5 At the top of the list on the first page of stati
19. Texas Instruments Carnegie Mellon Human Computer Interaction Final Project Report August 2 1999 Table of Contents Overview Part Project Summary Background Research Initial Steps Interface Evaluation Feedback and Conclusion Part Il Detailed Descriptions Introduction Calculator Flash Card Viewer Personal Computer Flash Card Maker Future Work Appendices A References B Usability Heuristics C Example User Test Protocol D Prototyping E User Test Data Sources F Code Documentation 21 37 40 41 42 47 49 50 Overview This report details the process and progress of the Texas Instruments Blue Team as part of the Carnegie Mellon University HCI Master s Project At the start of the project the team was directed by Texas Instruments to find uses for TI 83 Plus graphing calculators in non math and science high school classrooms We gathered initial information about the activities and needs of high school teachers and students in the humanities through interactions which took place in the context of their daily routines The analysis of this information steered the team toward the creation of a Flash Card Viewer application for the calculator and a companion Flash Card Maker application for personal computers running Microsoft Windows Early prototypes of the two applications were constructed upon which the team conducted iterative design and user testing with high school students ov
20. any of the Latin vocabulary words The application could point out the difference in these categories so that the student could adjust their study habits Grouping Subsets On occasion students mentioned that it would be helpful if certain cards always appeared one after another in the stack We observed many instances of back and forth reviewing between two similar and confusing cards such as GNP and GDP Placing the cards next to one another may aid in learning their distinction Pictures Diagrams on Flash Cards Many of the flashcards students showed to us included hand drawn pictures and diagrams Supporting this type of learning seems a natural next step Search Lookup Subjects expressed an interest in jumping to specific cards from the statistics screen so that they could immediately review missed material References to Textbook Material Several students suggested that they would find it helpful if the statistics screen not only told them what they had missed but also where to look up the material for review Providing page numbers along with the statistics would not only let the students know what was wrong but also let them know where to review it Flash Card Maker Check for Illegal Characters The PC is able to display many characters that cannot be displayed on the calculator The Flash Card Maker will need to replace these characters and provide feedback to the user 37 Provide Feedback on Maximum Text Length Th
21. application 18 4 Yes amp No Stats YOU HAVE 9 CARDS LEFT TO TUDY FE INTEODUCING gt CARDS CHELPICVES CO CHENUICF LIF Front of card Re introduction SPAIN JAFAN NORTH KOREA CUEA AUSTRALIA INDIA NEST FAGE F Statistics Feature The main aspect of the Flash Card Viewer that gives it an advantage over paper flash cards is the inclusion of the Yes and No buttons in the interface These buttons mimic the behavior of users of paper flash cards in that they provide users with the chance to progressively narrow down their set of flash cards to the ones they are less comfortable with The calculator records their answers for each card and re introduces random cards that users have said they feel comfortable with The Statistics screen lists each card in a flash card set in order starting with the items users said they were less comfortable with Reasoning See the section in Part of this report regarding research into the Psychology Literature for more information Pitfall Students who don t read the help will not understand the purpose of the Yes and No buttons 19 5 Reintroduction of Cards Shuffle amp Repeat UFFLE REPEAT HORLO CAPITALS ELE TRL EEN 4 INSTRUCTIONS SHUFFLING STACK a QUT Shuffling Shuffle and Repeat Feature The Flash Card Viewer presents a set of flash cards in random order each time the user re starts the set of cards Reasoning Presenting the flash cards in
22. at you are saying through the microphone you are wearing and can see what you are doing through the camera won t be paying attention to anything you are doing unless you begin speaking to me directly to ask a question or call me back into the room Start the application Are you ready to begin 44 INDIA _____ GREECE PORTUGAL JAPAN VENEZUELA NORTH KOREA CUBA CANADA NEW ZEALAND SOUTH KOREA AFGHANISTAN ANDORRA ___ AUSTRALIA CAMEROON _____ EGYPT EQUADOR NIGERIA _____ PHILIPINES SOUTHAFRICA SPAIN A ATHENS B CARACAS C HAVANA D LISBON E NEW DELHI F OTTAWA G PYONGYANG H SEOUL I TOKYO J WELLINGTON K ABUJA L ANDORRA LA VELLA M CAIRO N CANBERRA O JOHANNESBURGH P KABUL Q MADRID R MANILA S QUITO T YAOUNDE 45 E _ INDIA __A__ GREECE __D__ PORTUGAL 1 JAPAN __B__ VENEZUELA __G___ NORTH KOREA _C___ CUBA OF CANADA __J___ NEW ZEALAND __H___ SOUTH KOREA 2P AFGHANISTAN __L___ ANDORRA N AUSTRALIA __T___ CAMEROON __M__ EGYPT _S_ EQUADOR _K NIGERIA _R PHILIPINES __O___ SOUTH AFRICA __Q__ SPAIN A ATHENS B CARACAS C HAVANA D LISBON E NEW DELHI F OTTAWA G PYONGYANG H SEOUL I TOKYO J WELLINGTON K ABUJA L ANDORRA LA VELLA M CAIRO N CANBERRA O JOHANNESBURG P KABUL Q MADRID R MANILA S QUITO T YAOUNDE 46 Appendix D Prototyping Flash Card Viewer
23. d the cue for test is not the primary determinant of JOL accuracy Journal of Memory amp Language 36 1 34 49 Keleman W L amp Weaver C A Ill 1997 Enhanced memory at delays Why do judgments of learning improve over time Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory amp Cognition 23 6 1394 1409 Lindsay D Stephen K amp Colleen M 1996 Creating illusions of familiarity in a cued recall remember know paradigm Journal of Memory amp Language 35 2 197 211 Miner A amp Reder L M 1994 A new look at feeling of knowing Its metacognitive role in regulating question answering In Metcalfe J and Shimamura A Eds Metacognition Knowing about knowing Cambridge Mass MIT Press Nielsen Jakob 1999 Heuristic Evaluation Retrieved August 1 1999 from the World Wide Web http Awww useit com papers heuristic Reder L M amp Anderson J R 1982 Effects of spacing and embellishments on memory for the main points of a text Memory and Cognition 10 97 102 Reder L M amp Ritter F 1992 What determines initial feeling of knowing Familiarity with question terms not with the answer Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition 18 435 451 Russo R Parkin A J Taylor S R amp Wilks J 1998 Revising current two process accounts of spacing effects in memory Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory amp Cognition 24 1 161 172
24. ded some electronic Flash Cards for you to study from and you have already downloaded them into your calculator Please study the Economics terms for several minutes beginning now Questions to ask participants How did you know how to flip cards and jump between cards How could you tell the front from the back What do you think happens when you press Yes When you press No How should those buttons be used Tell me what you think about the Yes No buttons Did you notice that some of the words you pressed Yes for were reappearing What is your opinion about this Did you have problems with any part of the application What did you think the statistics screen was telling you What might make it more useful 43 Creator Task Task Description You have been transported back in time about two months It is now May you re back in school and you are preparing to study for a test that you will have in about a week You have a great new program that lets you create flash cards that can be viewed on your TI 83 calculator You decide to give this program a try and make some flash cards to use when studying for your test Your teacher has given you a file called WorldCapitals fcd that contains flash cards for 232 world capitals However she told you that there are a few mistakes that you need to correct before you begin studying the flash cards 1 Your teacher included the capital of the United States as part of t
25. ds on ratio of yes and no answers Cards never receiving no have 20 chance of reintroduction Left button cannot back out of Help screens CAN back out of Statistics screens Please wait changed to Shuffling Stack Version 6 Button labels are help yes no menu flip Faster card sort User can dismiss message screens by pressing any key Users can back out of pick stack menu Statistics and Help use MENU on first and last page instead of prev next menu Compare 2 versions Between card message MOVING TO CARD Label on each card FRONT OF CARD 47 Flash Card Maker VERSION FUNCTIONALITY Version 1 Next Previous New Card and Delete Buttons Front of Card and Back of Card text fields Simple Save and Open Display active card and total card Simple system message box Version 2 Export to calculator data format added Calculator Look and Feel added Version 3 Tab switching between Front of Card Back of Card and New button Position Cursor at end of text field on navigate and tab switch Highlighting of active text field or button Added keyboard shortcuts for common operations Language now matches calculator s Version 4 Jump to first last card buttons and menu items added Searching by string Go To Card form added Cut Copy Paste works reliably Version 5 Made export to calculator file format more effici
26. e accuracy of the prediction is nearly perfect This phenomenon has consequences for the use of flash cards as the use of traditional flash cards involves just this kind of judgement when deciding which cards to keep in the stack and which are known well enough to set aside However even immediately following exposure to the material judgements of learning are better than chance Preliminary User Testing Preliminary user tests were informal Paper mockups of the interface were created and placed on the calculator screen The mockups consisted of a sequence of small rectangular pieces of paper that fit directly on the calculator screen surface Participants held the calculator in their hand and pressed the calculator buttons while the tester switched paper screens in response to the participants actions Only one paper screen was visible to the participant at any given time Participants were asked several questions about their interaction with the mockups and these questions served as general guidelines for each user test However the tester also followed up on comments and questions from participants during the test Issues addressed included affordance screen placement word choice and self report For more information on preliminary user testing see the interim report issued in June 1999 Design Decisions Based on initial user test data as well as previous research at this stage the design team made decisions regarding the interface
27. e Flash Card Maker currently limits the length of both the Front of Card and Back of Card text fields so that the user cannot type in more characters than can be displayed on the calculator The application will need to provide the user feedback on why this limiting is taking place Provide one Click linking to calculator from PC Currently users must export from the Flash Card Maker import that file into the TI Link Application and then transmit the converted file to the calculator By directly linking the Flash Card Maker to the TI 83 we would eliminate many potential stumbling points along this path Internet Parser While editing the Flash Card Maker s tab delimitated file format makes the generation of large stacks easier editing tab delimitated files is still too difficult for many users see TI Red s report for more detail Providing an easier means of converting existing data on the WWW into flashcard format would open up a world of content to users of the application Memory Warnings On several occasions during development we overloaded the storage space of the calculator We concluded that the Flash Card Maker is able to calculate the size of the data file and provide a warning if it approaches a dangerous size Centering Text This feature was asked for specifically by several users and would help make the Flash Card Maker s flashcards more like traditional flashcards A note of caution several of the teac
28. e current card indicated by the variable C prgmVIEWER makes sure C is updated before calling prgmDISPBACK If you understand how prgmDISPBACK works you understand the data structure works Clears the screen displays the inter cards message Uses a do nothing loop to keep the message on the screen long enough to be read by the user before clearing the screen After the screen is cleared puts up a PIC with the skeleton of the card view i e the button labels only Called when user presses the Left Button move to previous card at the first card of the current pass of the stack and therefore there is no previous card to move to prgmPREVMSG will display an information screen you are at the first card of the stack and the number of cards in this pass of the stack Uses a do nothing loop to keep the message on the screen long enough to be read by the user before clearing the screen The user can clear the screen before the do nothing loop finishes by pressing any button Tl Basic menu that appears when user presses the Menu button from card view Allows the user to e continue return to card view pick a new stack to study view Statistics read the help screens quit Viewer Displays a series of help screens navigated by the Left and Right Buttons Current implementation describe what the 4 arrow buttons do the mapping of the top row of calculator buttons and the replacement onscreen button labels what the HELP YES
29. ent Added confirm to delete cards Removed buttons for jump to first and last card Fixed silent save error that saved over old files 48 Appendix E User Test Data Sources M F YEAR SCHOOL PUBLIC PRIVATE 1 M Soph Allderdice Public 2 M Fr Mestivta Private 3 F Grad Shadyside Academy Private 4 F Soph Allderdice Public 5 F Sr Trez Academy Private 6 M Soph Allderdice Public 7 M Soph Schenley Public 8 M Fr Allderdice Public 9 M Soph Allderdice Public 10 F Soph Peabody Public 11 M Soph Allderdice Public 12 M Sr Oakland Private 13 F Jr Allderdice Public 14 M Grad Andrews TX Private 15 F Grad Faith Christian Private 16 M Fr Central Catholic Private 17 M Sr Central Catholic Private 18 M Soph Steel Valley Private 19 M Sr Allderdice Public 20 M Soph Mestivta Private 21 F Soph Allderdice Public 22 M Sr Allderdice Public 23 M Jr Schenley Public 24 F Jr Ellis Private 25 M Fr Central Catholic Private 26 M Sr Allderdice Public 49 Appendix F TI Basic code documentation for Flash Card Viewer application Purpose of this document This document replaces the traditional comments in program code There are 2 reasons for not commenting the program code directly 1 Comments in an interpreted TI Basic program makes the program run slower and 2 the code viewing s
30. er the span of six weeks during the summer of 1999 This report details An overview of work conducted over the last two semesters at Carnegie Mellon including Background research that guided the design of the Viewer and Maker applications Initial stages of design and testing User testing procedures and some results Il A detailed description of the functionality of the two final applications Flash Card Viewer calculator Flash Card Maker PC Suggestions for future work PART I Project Summary Background Research The focus for this project was to find uses for graphing calculators in non math and science areas of high school curriculum and classrooms As part of the initial data gathering phase we conducted observations and talked with high school teachers and students in the context of their normal activities We called this technique contextual interviewing Observing teachers in the process of teaching and students while at home studying enabled us to get a firsthand look at the kinds of tasks and sequences they complete on a daily basis Please see the interim report issued in April of 1999 for a more detailed account of this phase of the project Over the course of several months group members observed high school humanities classes while in session Observations took place in public and private schools and in a variety of subjects Public High School Private High School German 3 visits Compositio
31. etween Front of Card Back of Card and the New Card button expert users are able to rapidly generate flashcard content Users also asked for this feature or alluded to it with comments such as I wanted to tab to get to the back of card window user 7 25 Cursor Positioning A BEAR MARKET IS ONE IN WHICH THE VALUE OF 8 HSTOCKS ARE HEADED DOWN JA BEAR MARKET IS ONE IN WHICH THE VALUE OF STOCKS ARE HEADED DOWN F THE OPPOSITE OF A BULL 5 H 8 8 8 8 8 5 ts ESTES ERAS ER EES RES RFA FAA PARSER EER EKS ER EES EE KERE ES EE BORS RS RR EER R Back of Card ERAS ART FEDS ARIF RSIS FES FS FRIESE RAPES EA ARIS PREPS ERI RRS EAS RFS Back of Card Feature When tabbing between the Front and the Back of a card or navigating from one card to another the cursor is inserted at the end of the active text box Reasoning A common editing task involves adding additional information to the end of a card By inserting the cursor at the end of the active text box we are supporting this task 26 Displaying Card Numbers im Flash Card Maker File Edit Cards Link Card 78 of 234 Feature Display the current card number in the context of the total number of cards Reasoning Throughout user testing the calculator application we found a significant number of students having difficulty distinguishing between the back of one card and the front of the next Without a clea
32. ext am interested in finding out how easy the application is for people to use without reading a user s manual or doing a tutorial lt Show the calculator and ask Have you used one of these before If no say let me tell you a little bit about the equipment we will be using and talk a little about the calculator what it is capable of doing maybe the On Prgm 2nd and Alpha keys If yes ask them how often they used it and what they did the last time they used one Also briefly explain the recording setup gt I m testing the software I m not testing you I m looking for places where the flash card application might be difficult to use so if you can t do some things please don t feel bad That is exactly what we are looking for Your participation in this study is completely voluntary Although don t know why this would happen if you become uncomfortable in any way please feel free to stop at any time and you will still receive your 25 for participating We are going to have you do three things during this user testing session 1 Think aloud while you use the calculator application for the first time so we can discover where the program is confusing l Il tell you more about thinking aloud in a minute 2 Study some flash cards and take a short quiz you ll get 5 additional dollars if you score above 75 on the quiz 3 Think aloud while you use an application for creating flash cards on the PC Explain Thinking Al
33. f card 2 Take the 0 from element 13 of LIN2 The 0 means line 6 is a blank line To find the text for line 7 of the back side of card 2 Take the 0 from element 14 of LIN2 The 0 means line 7 is a blank line This data structure was not designed with space efficiency as the primary concern The decision was to trade more space for faster code and development flexibility For instance word spacing is 3 pixels which reduce eyestrain greatly The data structure has three spaces for every word space which will render on the screen as 3 pixels This data structure also allowed us to explore text formatting issues in our program development Data variables and lists shared between Code modules All variables in TI Basic are global We identified the following variables for communicating values within a Code Module and between different Code modules Variable R indicates the number of lines of text on a card R is use by Code modules DISPFRNT and DISPBACK to read from LIN1 and LIN2 correctly Variable S indicates which stack is currently in use or was most recently used When the Viewer application starts it checks S to determine if there was a previously used stack that can be presented in the Menu as USE LAST STACK Currently expected values are 1 to 3 and they map to the code modules INITDAT1 INITDAT2 and INITDATS3 Variable Z serves as return value parameter for Code modules HELP and PICKSTAC 53 In Code module
34. hat the order in which a person learns something affects their ability to recall it later If a set of information is always studied in the same order it will be harder to recall it if it is presented in a different order To defeat this effect it is necessary to frequently change the order in which the material to be learned is presented 2 Spaced Practice Another commonly observed phenomenon is that recall for material that seems to be learned can be improved if that material continues to be presented on an irregular basis to the person studying This supports the idea that even material students are confident they know should be repeated just for practice 3 Feeling of Knowing Feeling of knowing is a state that occurs when a person sees a word or concept with which they seem to be unfamiliar The best way to describe it is the state of believing that a piece of information can be retrieved from memory even though that piece of information currently cannot be recalled Miner amp Reder 1994 It is possible for this state to occur when a person views a flash card indeed any time information has to be recalled from memory 4 Judgements of Learning A Judgement of Learning occurs when people are asked to predict future memory performance of recently learned material Kelemen amp Weaver 1997 This prediction tends to be fairly inaccurate immediately after viewing the material and increases until after a 5 minute delay th
35. he flash card set She later decided that it was too easy and wants this card removed from the set 2 The capital of Australia was entered incorrectly in this flash card set Make sure that the capital of Australia reads Canberra not Sydney 3 The flash card for Yaounde the capital of Cameroon was left out of the set by mistake Please create a new flash card for Yaounde Cameroon at position 15 in the flash card set 4 The city was left off the back of the very last flash card in the set It should be Harare the capital of Zimbabwe Please correct this mistake 5 Finally the card for the Philippines is misspelled in two places There is only one L in Philippines and in Manila Questions to ask participants Was it easy to understand how to jump between cards and make new ones Did you have problems with any part of this program What do you think could be improved about this program Experimenter Instructions for the Quiz Task What want you to do next is to study a subset of the flash cards for World Capitals which is already on the calculator am going to give you a short quiz when you have finished studying the flash cards You will receive 5 more if you score a 75 or better on the quiz don t want you to think aloud any more in fact am going to leave the room while you study Please take your time studying the flash cards and when you are ready for the quiz call me back into the room can hear wh
36. hers we interviewed believed that given too many editing features to students might distract from the generation of new cards Listview amp Treeview Through brainstorming and observations we generated a collection of features dealing with stack manipulation Providing more holistic views of the flashcards may allow for such features as making new flashcard sets from old ones reordering cards and viewing multiple stacks at once Sorting Options Several users ask for the ability to sort their flashcards in alphabetical order once they were finished generating them As this would make searching and editing later easier it seems to be a usefull feature to add Spell Checking Through teacher interviews and observation we learned that teachers spend a good amount of time preparing materials for their class and in proofreading this material as best they can 38 Upper amp Lowercase Letters Readability on the calculator would be greatly improved if the Flash Card Viewer could display both upper and lower case If this change is made the Flash Card Maker will need to reflect this new feature 39 Appendix A References Carroll M Nelson T O amp Kirwan A 1997 Tradeoff of semantic relatedness and degree of overlearning Differential effects on metamemory and on long term retention Acta Psychologica 95 3 239 253 Dunlosky J amp Nelson T O 1997 Similarity between the cue for judgments of learning JOL an
37. his section many of which came directly out of user s suggestions and subject observation Preceding the description of both the Flash Card Viewer and Maker are brief user manuals to bring the reader up to speed with the applications use 11 Flash Card Viewer Manual Starting the Flash Card Viewer Start the Flash Card application by pressing PRGM and selecting VIEWER You will see the Viewer start menu with the following options USE LAST STACK Retrieves the stack you were studying the last time you ran the application Note This option will not appear when you run the application for the first time PICK NEW STACK Allows you to select a new flash card stack to study INSTRUCTIONS Brings up a short summary of key commands QUIT Exits the flash card viewer Using the Flash Cards TEXAS INSTRUMENTS TI 83 Plus Once you start the flash card stack it will be shuffled That is the order of the cards will be randomly mixed GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT up A screen will come up telling you the name of the COD stack and the number of cards in the stack After the cards are shuffled you will see the front side of the first card in the stack The text of your flash card is at the top The functions listed at the bottom can be accessed by pressing the blue buttons on the top row of the calculator see Figure 1 Button Means Y HELP WINDOW YES Fig 1 Flash ZOOM NO TRACE MENU GRAPH FLIP e HELP brings up a sho
38. is hard coded with Economics Latin and World Capitals stacks ppgmPICKSTAC calls prgmINITDATn where n is currently hard coded as 1 for Economics 2 for Latin and 3 for World Capitals ppgmPICKSTAC then display an information screen that says which stack is being loaded which is also currently hard coded the number of cards in the stack and a Shuffling message prgmPICKSTAC will next call prgmINITMISC to setup additional Lists In the actual Tl Assembly implementation making use of the Archive memory we expect the program to check what stacks are in the Archive and present the user with a choice menu Thus there shall be no hard coding in the Tl Assembly implementation Essentially a series of store statements Stores the text appearing on the front of cards concatenated in Str1 Stores the text appearing on the back of cards concatenated in Str2 Setups Lists POS1 POS2 LIN1 LIN2 SPC1 and SPC2 And store the number of cards in this stack in N Always called after a call to prgmINITDATn Initializes Lists SHOW YES NO SCOR and SORT using the variable N Display the text for the front of the current card indicated by the variable C prgmVIEWER makes sure C is updated before calling 55 prgmDISPBACK prgmCARDNUM prgmPREVMSG prgmMIDMENU prgmHELP prgmSTATS prgmENDMENU prgmDISPFRNT If you understand how prgmDISPFRNT works you understand the data structure works Display the text for the back of th
39. l as any instructions or errors we need to convey to the user A message box provides more detailed feedback than a system beep Future Work The message box could also be used to explain such topics as illegal characters or the maximum length of text fields 29 Common Navigation Affordances MODE DEL XTAan STAT Feature Navigation buttons mimic the calculator s arrow keys Reasoning Because the calculator app already teaches one method of flashcard navigation the Flash Card Maker should leverage on this technique By teaching one common navigation technique we eliminate unnecessary learning of multiple interfaces 30 Rapid Navigation ia Flash Card Maker File Edit Cards Link Insert New Card Ctrl N Delete This Card Ctrl D Next Card Previous Card First Card Last Card Go To Card Ctrl G Feature Provide a means of navigating to the first or last card in one step Reasoning A common editing task is adding additional cards to the end of an existing stack Through user testing we noticed a high level of frustration clicking through a stack of cards one by one Providing a method to jump to the last card in a stack eases this task Another common task we observed included navigating back to the beginning of a stack and reviewing the stack s contents therefore we added a similar means to jump to the first card After making corrections he used lt lt key to go to beginning of stack so
40. l findings the group brainstormed design ideas which would determine the direction of future work The resulting list of ideas was culled to include only those which matched the focus well had strong support from the primary data collected and were suitable for implementation on the TI 83 Plus The four major design ideas settled upon were 1 Adaptive Flash Cards 2 Data Visualization Tool 3 Searchable Reference and 4 ClassNet For more details about each of these ideas see the interim report distributed in April 1999 After receiving feedback from Texas Instruments the group chose to pursue the Adaptive Flash Cards concept This decision was motivated by several factors 1 Most importantly an overall goal of this project was to produce a high fidelity prototype This goal seemed most attainable with the Flash Cards concept because it did not require any highly complicated visual presentations of information 2 There was strong support for the use of flash cards as study aids among high school students and we wanted to provide them with an unspecialized application that could be useful in conjunction with any of their humanities classes 3 There were some interesting design issues in translating a very physical form of studying into a virtual form We wanted to explore the adaptive nature of electronic flash cards and what kind of advantages they could offer over paper 4 Finally it seemed that providing students with an oppor
41. m going to give you a few final instructions As you re doing the tasks won t be able to answer any questions But if you do have questions go ahead and ask them anyway so that can learn more about what kinds of questions the flash card application brings up I ll answer your questions after the session Also if you forget to think aloud I ll say Please keep talking Do you have any questions about thinking aloud Turn on the calculator and start the flash card application Guidelines for Thinking Aloud e Say whatever s on your mind Don t hold back hunches guesses wild ideas images or intentions e Speak as telegraphically as you please Don t worry about complete sentences and eloquence e Don t overexplain or justify what you are doing Analyze no more than you would normally e Don t talk about the past Try to get into the pattern of saying what you re thinking at the same time you re thinking it not of thinking for a while and then describing what your thoughts were e Speak as continuously as possible Try to say something at least once every five seconds even if it s only I m drawing a blank e Speak audibly Watch for your voice dropping as you become involved with what you are doing Viewer Task Economics Task Description You are taking an Economics class Your teacher has told you that at the beginning of the next class period she will give you a pop quiz on the vocabulary for chapter She has provi
42. n US History US History 2 visits Biology European History Physics II Drama Calculus Calculus Group members also spoke directly with teachers and students 5 Teacher Interviews Government Composition Algebra English US History 3 Student Interviews The information gathered in multiple interviews and observations was later examined for patterns and commonalties across separate interviews The following statements summarize the issues that affected a majority of teachers and students in the humanities 1 Students are comfortable exploring new uses for their calculators and like using the graphing functions 2 Students used a variety of methods to complete their homework and to study for tests such as review of class notes use of flash cards and use of an electronic dictionary 3 Non math and science teachers are wary of new technologies and do not want it to take up precious class time 4 Classroom activities included but were not limited to data analysis test taking note taking discussions and debates 5 Teachers were concerned about participation during class discussions The atmosphere of the classes varied widely from enthusiastic chaos to subdued indifference 6 Teachers used many different methods to transmit information to the class These included overhead projectors videotapes audiotapes roll down maps blackboards whiteboards bulletin boards posters and handouts Based on the preceding six genera
43. n as it employs a team of evaluators and follows an established set of design heuristics The evaluation team can be made up of three or more individuals not involved in the initial software design but it does not include any end users of the system The design heuristics can be thought of as general purpose guidelines we chose a set developed by Nielsen and Molich 1989 detailed below For a detailed description of each of the heuristics see Appendix B 1 Visibility of system status 2 Match between system and the real world 3 User control and freedom 4 Consistency and standards 5 Error prevention 6 Recognition rather than recall 7 Flexibility and efficiency of use 8 Aesthetic and minimalist design 9 Help users recognize diagnose and recover from errors 10 Help and documentation The above heuristics were applied to the Flash Card Maker application nearly halfway through its development cycle The resulting user interface problems were corrected in the next version of the Maker Think Aloud Usability Study This technique involves the observation of real users interacting with an interface whether it is a prototype or a full release Users are asked to speak their thoughts aloud to say everything that enters their minds as they are interacting with the interface This procedure can reveal places in the interface where users are confused and frustrated or happy and satisfied We embarked upon an iterative process
44. oud In this observation am interested in what you think about as you perform the tasks will be asking you to do Im going to ask that you think aloud while you are using the software What mean by think aloud is that want you to tell me EVERYTHING that you are thinking from the first time that you see the statement of the task until you finish the task would like you to talk aloud CONSTANTLY from the time give you the task until you have completed it don t want you to try to plan out what to say or try to explain to me what you are thinking Just act as if you are alone speaking to yourself just a little louder You ll probably do things like skip words and reread things that wouldn t make sense to someone listening This is OK it means you are doing it right When you are working on the computer you ll be looking for things and seeing things that catch your attention These things you are searching for and things that you see are as important for our observation as thoughts you are thinking from memory so please verbalize these too Optional Give them the guidelines for thinking aloud sheet I m going to do an example for you so you get an idea of what thinking aloud sounds like Listen to the types of things say as think aloud while play solitaire for a minute or two 42 Now it s your turn to think aloud as you are using the computer Please think aloud as you set the background color to blue I
45. pace in TI Graph Link is so limited that it is difficult to communicate effectively Data Structure The contents of each flash card stack are captured in the variables Str1 Str2 and lists POS1 POS2 LIN1 LIN2 SPC1 and SPC2 Str1 and lists POS1 SPC1 and LIN1 are for the front sides of the cards Str2 and lists POS2 SPC2 and LIN2 are for the back sides of the cards Str1 contains the text for the front sides of the cards in the stack Str2 contains the text for the back sides of the cards in the stack list POS1 contains the starting positions of the sub strings in Str1 list POS2 contains the starting positions of the sub strings in Str2 list LIN1 relates the lines on the cards to the contents of list POS1 list LIN2 relates the lines on the cards to the contents of list POS2 list SPC1 contains info on leading spaces for the strings in Str1 list SPC2 contains info on leading spaces for the strings in Str2 The data structure for storing the contents of the backs of cards is the same as storing the contents of the fronts of cards just different variables for example Str2 versus Str1 We will explain the data structure using the back sides of the following 2 card stack since the back sides have more complexity to them LINE Content of front of card Content of back of card Card 1 line 1 WELLINGTON line 2 line 3 NEW ZEALAND ENGLISH MAORI line 4 line 5 line 6 line 7 Card 2 line 1 BUCHAREST line 2 line 3 ROMANIA
46. r a different file name Go to File gt Save As Make sure to save the stack as type Flash Card File FCF e To load an existing flash card stack Go to File gt Open or press Ctrl O and choose from the list of FCF files 22 Exporting Cards to Calculator Once you have created your flash card stack you can send them to the TI 83 Plus so that they can be used with the Flash Card Viewer To do this you will need to have the TI Graph Link M for Windows software which you can download for free from the Texas Instruments website http www ti com calc You must use the version of Graph Link for the TI 83 Plus 1 In Flash Card Maker go to Link gt Send Cards to Calculator 2 Enter the file name of the stack and save as type Text File TXT 3 Open Graph Link and go to Tools gt Import gt ASCII Program 4 Select your stack file ending in TXT 5 Save your stack file as type TI 83 Plus Program 8xp 6 In the Program window change the program name to INITDAT1 INITDAT2 or INITDAT3 7 Click on Send To RAM in the Program window to send the file to the TI 83 Plus calculator Exiting the Flash Card Maker e To exit the Maker go to File gt Quit or press Ctrl Q This step will change once dynamic stack naming has been implemented in the application For example the user will be able to name it History Biology or whatever 23 Flash Card Maker De
47. r picture of where in the stack he is a user cannot accurately navigate the flashcards By using the language Card X of Y we are reinforcing the language used in the calculator application 27 Highlighting of Active Text Field im Flash Card Maker File Edit Cards Link Card 78 of 234 Front of Card Feature Give the text field or button with focus extra highlighting beyond a blinking cursor alone In the above screenshot we see that the text field on the right has both the focus notice the cursor and an extra border Reasoning With multiple text fields and buttons users often had trouble understanding where the application s focus was I couldn t see the cursor in the Front of Card to know that could type in a card right away thought had to click in the box to make it work user 9 This misunderstanding lead to several editing mistakes By giving the active text field or button an extra level of highlighting we were able to help users avoid these errors 28 Message Box FlashCard set opened from C My Documents TI worldcaps fef FlashCards saved to C My Documents TISNEWworldcaps fcf Feature Provide a message box for communicating system states and errors to the user Reasoning Through user testing we observed several subjects questioning whether or not a save or deletion actually occurred A resident message box serves as a common area for such system messages as wel
48. ree times and No once the probability of the card being re introduced is 25 Overall effect Cards that the user responded with No several times before finally responding with Yes are more likely to be re introduced than cards with less No s before a Yes response After the re introduction of hidden cards and displaying the Re introduction message All the cards that are to be shown in the next pass of the stack have their order of presentation shuffled Display a parting message and Stop program execution Picture of front card view button labels and card border Refer to prgmPICDRAW for drawing code Picture of back card view button labels only Refer to prgmPICDRAW for drawing code 57
49. rt summary of key commands e MENU brings up a menu similar to the start menu The rest of the options are described in the next few sections 12 Flipping the Card Like paper flash cards the TI Adaptive Flash Cards have a front and a back To see the back of the flash card you must flip the card over There are two ways to flip e Press the FLIP GRAPH key on the top row of buttons or e Press the up arrow or down arrow on the keypad After flipping you will see the text on the other side of the flash card as in Figure 2 Moving Between Cards e To retrieve the next card in the stack use the right arrow on the keypad e To return to the previous card in the stack use the left arrow on the keypad When you move to a different card the application will display a brief message on the screen like that in Figure 3 THE TOTAL VALUE OF EVERYTHING FRODUCED EY THE CITIZEN OF A COUNTRY OVER ONE VERF HELFITESIROIHERUMFLIFI Fig 2 Back of MOVING TO CARD z OF 11 Fig 3 Between card 13 Self test Yes amp No As you go through the stack of cards you can keep track of when you think you know a card well and when you think you need more practice on that card e Press YES WINDOW when you are confident that you know the answer for a card e Press NO ZOOM when you are not confident that you know the answer for a card The application will remember the cards you answered N
50. rtion of the following screen between cards in user tests with participants also aided in marking the transition from one card to the next MOVING TO CARD z OF 20 16 2 Navigation Menus Multiple Stacks 1 Start Menu 2 Intermediate Menu accessed from Menu button ae IT FLE REPEAT Ell STACK ICS UCTIONS ae 3 Final Menu 4 Pick Stack menu YOU HAVE 11 CARDS LEFT TO TUDY 5 End of stack message Feature The flash card application has four distinct menus available at different times during the use of the application The Start Menu 1 is the first screen to appear when the user starts the application The Intermediate Menu 2 can be reached by pressing the blue TRACE button Reasoning As more functionality was added to the application it became necessary to invent more efficient methods for accessing that functionality from various parts of the application Pitfall From glancing over the menu screens above it is clear that there is a possibility for users to become confused by the different menus since they all contain similar choices Solution We attempted to minimize this by keeping the position of an option consistent across all menus For example you can see that the Pick New Stack option is always number 2 and Quit is always the last menu option 17 3 Help Instructions USE THE ARROW EUTTONS TO NAVIGATE AND FLIF CARDS FLIF CARD FOR ANSHEF 1 FREVIOU C
51. stics you will see the cards you answered NO to more often At the bottom of the list on the last page of statistics you will see the cards you answered YES to more often Exiting the Flash Card Viewer There are two ways to exit the application e Select QUIT from any menu or e Press the 2nd key and then the QUIT MODE key GROS NATIONAL F GROS DOMESTIC F EEAR MARKET STOCK LIQUIDITY AUDIT NEXT FAGE F 15 Flash Card Viewer Details 1 Basic Characteristics FRONT BACK CHELFICVES UNO JCHENUJCFLIF CHELFICVES JUNO JCHENUJCFLIF Feature Each flash card consists of a front and back The front of each flash card appears first and user must press the blue Graph button which maps to the Flip label on the screen to see the back of the flash card Reasoning The basic idea for this feature came directly from paper flash cards People who are familiar with paper flash cards expect for each card to have a front and a back Pitfall Some users mistook the front of the next flash card with the back of the current flash card when words in the flash card set were completely unfamiliar This situation only occurred when the user was not aware that it was possible to flip the flash card before the Flip label was instated Solutions We invented two solutions to solve this problem The fifth empty button was labeled Flip and given the same flip functionality as the up and down arrow keys on the calculator The inse
52. t from the calculator s text in several ways screen resolution contrast and font The higher resolution of the computer s screen should be used to make reading easier especially during long editing tasks Similarly increasing the contrast beyond the calculator s improves readability Along the same lines serif fonts are known to improve readability 35 Confirming Deletion Card 126 of 234 Delete Card EZ PEDO TAREE VERSE UIT Y IRV IANI IIA i Are you sure you want to delete this card of Card Feature Ask user to confirm deletion of flashcard Reasoning On several occasions during user testing subjects were unclear about whether or not they had successfully deleted a card He had no problem deleting a card went straight to DEL After clicking OK in the confirm box he said Oops hope that deleted It didn t seem like there was enough feedback for him to know for sure that the card had been deleted Notes on subject 16 On two occasions a user accidentally clicked the delete button when targeting the new button Adding a confirmation dialogue box for deleting eliminate both of these errors during further testing 36 Future Work Flash Card Viewer Categorization The statistics screen could be made to look for patterns of mistakes so that it could point out categories to review For example a student may be answering all of the questions on Latin history correctly while they miss m
53. tails Two Screens in Flash Card Maker File Edit Cards Link Card 72 of 234 PARIS ge H f l i i IOLA ER SLE ELLEN CIEE RE RAS Front of Card ma Back of Card D NEw N DEL FlashCard set opened from C My D ocuments I worldcaps tcf Feature Make the Front of Card and Back of Card text fields visible simultaneously Reasoning Throughout user testing the calculator application we found a significant number of students having difficulty distinguishing between the back of one card and the front of the next Showing both sides of a single card in the Flash Card Maker eliminate this potential navigational error Its easy to move between cards and recognize the front and back user 15 24 Tab Switching im Flash Card Maker File Edit Cards Link Card 72 of 234 PARIS q H 3 5 b i 4 DERENDA TT Front of Cara Bek of Car D NEW N DEL FlashCard set opened from C My D ocuments TI worldcaps ef Feature Tabbing switches focus between Front of Card Back of Card and the New Card button Reasoning With their design heuristic Provide Short Cuts Nielsen and Molich 1989 suggest targeting frequently performed tasks involving lengthy sequences of actions The creation of multiple sequential flashcards in the Flash Card Maker is greatly facilitated if the user need not remove his hands from the keyboard By tabbing b
54. to clarify early interface design issues Field Research Our first step after deciding to pursue the Adaptive Flash Cards concept was to interview three students about their use of flash cards and attempt to collect some flash cards that students around Carnegie Mellon University had created for their own use We found that students both create their own study materials and also get study materials from teachers If the teacher provides the students with good study materials then students are less likely to create their own They use these study aids to test themselves when studying for exams in order to verify their knowledge of the material We asked several CMU students how they use flash cards when they study and found that most make a mental and physical distinction between cards they know and cards they don t know After looking at a flash card students decide how well they know the material on the card They will either set it aside because they feel they know it well enough that they don t need to return to it or keep it in the stack of cards they are actively studying The cards they are less sure of are thus studied more often Library Research In order to assist us in deciding what functionality should be included group members delved into the extensive psychology literature regarding learning Several concepts relevant to the use of flash cards were explored in some detail 1 Order Effects It is an established principle t
55. tunity to carry around fewer items at school implied that there would be one less thing for them to lose The group decided very early in the development of the Flash Cards concept that it was necessary to split the functionality we wanted to provide into two applications the Flash Card Viewer for the calculator and the Flash Card Maker for the PC This decision was based on the apparent constraints of the TI 83 platform for its use in non math and science classes Text input on the calculator is slow relative to a computer keyboard and humanities classes involve a lot of text The resolution of the screen limits the detail that can be displayed Text display is approximately twenty words eight lines of sixteen characters about two or three words per line even fewer if the words are long These constraints led us to conclude that the creation of electronic flash cards was better suited for a personal computer and the calculator application should serve as the Viewer for flash cards created on a PC After the user has finished creating the flash cards he can export the text toa file which can then be imported into GraphLink and downloaded to the calculator Initial Steps Initial steps guiding the creation of Flash Card applications for the PC and TI 83 Plus included informal field research into the use of flash cards library research into psychological principles behind flash cards as study aids and preliminary user testing
56. tview to jump to any arbitrary card makes searching and editing tasks significantly easier 33 File Format B worldcaps fcf WordPad File Edit View Insert Format Help ojele ala al o AFGHANISTAN KABUL ALBANIA TIRANE ALGERIA ALGIERS AMERICAN SAMOA PAGO PAGO ANDORRA ANDORRA LA VELLA ANGOLA LUANDA ANGUILLA THE VALLEY ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA SAINT ARGENTINA BUENOS AIRES ARMENIA YEREVAN ARUBA ORANJESTAD Feature Provide a text editable file format for easy importing of pre existing materials Reasoning Through using a text editable file format we are allowing experts to rapidly generate flashcard data from pre existing sources Though teacher interviews we found that teachers often encourage their students to conduct research on the WWW Being able to transmit this data to the Flash Card Maker seems a necessity See the report distributed in April 1999 for further details 34 Pseudo WYSIWYG Screens PLACIDUS Front of Card ZOOM TRACE GRAPH Feature Front of Card and Back of Card text fields mimic the appearance of the calculator s screen Reasoning Through making the Flash Card Maker s text fields mimic the look of the calculator the user quickly sees how his cards will display on the TI 83 Issues of spacing how many words will fit on a line and how many lines will fit on the screen are taken care of with minimal effort User testing and interviews helped us alter the Flash Card Maker s tex

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