Applying the retrospective think-aloud protocol in usability evaluations with children: Seeing through children's eyes

Abstract

This paper describes a study of usability testing with children in which stimulated retrospective probing was examined to determine its efficacy and usefulness. Ten children were involved in the evaluation of two different web sites. The session involved tracking their eyes as they conducted four tasks, two navigational and two informational tasks. Accuracy and efficiency and eye movement metrics were collected, and child participants rated their subjective satisfaction with the sites. Retrospective probing was conducted to elicit verbalizations of problems that children experienced in their use of these sites. The retrospective think-aloud (RTA) protocol was used along with eye gaze replay in post-session interviews. Findings show that the stimulated RTA protocol with eyetracking is effective in eliciting explanatory information about what children attend to in usability evaluations and how they process information, and how children arrived at a target element or solution. Implications for usability practitioners are discussed.