ABSTRACT

Title of Document:	CHILDREN’S INTERFACE DESIGN FOR SEARCHING AND BROWSING

	Hilary Browne Hutchinson, Doctor of Philosophy, 2005

Directed By:	Professor Benjamin B. Bederson, Department of Computer Science

Elementary-age children are among the largest user groups of computers and the Internet, so it is important to design searching and browsing interfaces to support them. However, many interfaces for children do not consider their skills and preferences. Children can perform simple, single item searches, and are also capable of conducting Boolean searches involving multiple search criteria. However, they have difficulty creating Boolean searches using hierarchical structures found in many interfaces. These interfaces often employ a sequential presentation of the category structure, where only one branch or facet at a time can be explored. This combination of structure and presentation keeps the screen from becoming cluttered, but requires a lot of navigation to explore categories in different areas and an understanding of potentially abstract high-level categories.

Based on previous research with adults, I believed that a simultaneous presentation of a flat category structure, where users could explore multiple, single-layer categories simultaneously, would better facilitate searching and browsing for children. This method reduces the amount of navigation and removes abstract categories. However, it introduces more visual clutter and sometimes the need for paging or scrolling. My research investigated these tradeoffs in two studies comparing searching and browsing in two interfaces with children in first, third, and fifth grade. Children did free browsing tasks, searched for a single item, and searched for two items to create conjunctive Boolean queries. The results indicate that a flat, simultaneous interface was significantly faster, easier, likeable, and preferred to a hierarchical, sequential interface for the Boolean search tasks. The simultaneous interface also allowed children to create significantly more conjunctive Boolean searches of multiple items while browsing than the sequential interface. These results suggest design guidelines for others who create children’s interfaces, and inform design changes in the interfaces used in the International Children’s Digital Library.

CHILDREN’S INTERFACE DESIGN FOR SEARCHING AND BROWSING

Hilary Browne Hutchinson

Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the

University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

2005

Advisory Committee:

Professor Benjamin B. Bederson, Chair

Professor Allison Druin

Professor Emeritus Jack Minker

Professor Kent Norman

Professor Ben Shneiderman

Hilary Browne Hutchinson

2005

Acknowledgements

Completing a PhD takes a lot of individual work and sacrifice, but it also requires the support, understanding, and advice of family, friends, advisors, and colleagues. I’d like to thank my husband for tolerating numerous years of stress and angst, often about subject matter he didn’t have any desire to understand. I’d like to thank my parents for arranging their lives around getting their children into the best public schools and private colleges money could buy, only to have both children flee to warmer climates for graduate school.

My PhD committee members have been a great source of support. I’d like to thank my advisor, Ben Bederson, for supporting me through not one but two PhD projects, a great job, assorted crazy trips to foreign countries, and large amounts of chocolate. I’d like to thank Allison Druin for essentially being my co-advisor, schooling me on how to work with children, and setting a wonderful example for women in technology everywhere. I’d like to thank Jack Minker for providing the fellowship that allowed me to complete my first two years of study, and for always checking up on my progress. I’d like to thank Kent Norman for his advice on experiment design and analysis, and on how to discipline unruly technology. I’d like to thank Doug Oard for his advice on digital library use and design. I’d like to thank Ben Shneiderman for always expressing an interest in anything I was doing, and for all his contributions to the field, which I’ve cited in every paper I’ve written. Although not an official member of my committee, I’d also like to thank Chip Denman, OIT Statistician Extraordinaire, for all his advice on how to analyze the results of my study.

The research study I conducted would not have been possible without the cooperation of the four elementary schools I worked with. I’d like to thank Bunny Egerton of the Columbia Association for putting me in touch with the students and staff in the after care programs at Northfield and Clemens Crossing elementary schools in Howard County. I’d like to thank Eric Sloan from Hillcrest elementary school for letting me work with the students in his technology classes. I’d like to thank Beth Hadley from Holy Trinity elementary school for allowing me to work with the after care program in her school. I’d also like to thank all the children who participated and their parents for allowing them to participate.

Finally, I’d like to acknowledge all of the wonderful staff and students who make up the Human-Computer Interaction Lab. The HCIL was the reason I chose to come to the University of Maryland, and the quality of the research and the people continue to make it a wonderful place to work. I’d especially like to thank Catherine Plaisant and Anne Rose, who do great research, keep the lab running, and are always up for a little ice cream to take the edge off.

Acknowledgements. ii

Table of Contents. iii

List of Tables. vii

List of Figures. viii

Chapter 1: Introduction. 1

1.1 Motivation. 1

1.2 Research Contributions. 5

1.2.1 Children’s Use and Preference of Search and Browse Interfaces. 5

1.2.2 Design Guidelines for Children’s Search and Browse Interfaces. 6

1.2.3 Working Examples of Interfaces. 6

Chapter 2: ICDL Background. 8

2.1 Project Description. 8