ContextualInquiry-Group:(P)roficientLanguageLearning

From CS160 User Interfaces Fa06

Contributions

Suthee Chaidaroon

• Initial setup of group wiki page
• Portions of Target Users
• Task Analysis Questions
• Analysis of Approach

Chen Chang

• Interview with Subject D
• Contributions to group (this section)
• Portions of Target Users
• Portions of Contextual Inquiry
• Analysis of Tasks

Rory Martin

• Interview with Subjects A, B, and C
• Portions of Target Users
• Problem and Solution Overview
• Portions of Contextual Inquiry
• Interface Design

Target Users (4 points)

Our target users group consists of:

1. students who are studying elementary Japanese
2. students who are practicing Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana writing
3. students who are learning Japanese vocabulary
4. students who want to improve their Japanese reading and writing skills

Subject A: Subject A is an 18 year old UC Berkeley freshman who is currently enrolled in Japanese 1A. She is majoring in EECS and is computer savvy. She was introduced to Japanese through anime and would like to be able to translate manga from Japanese to English. She took 4 years of high school Spanish and speaks (but does not read) Mandarin. She spends on average 6 hours per week “painfully” studying Japanese vocabulary words and grammar forms.

Subject B: Subject B is a 23 year old UC Berkeley senior who is currently enrolled in Japanese 1A. He is majoring in EECS and is also computer savvy. He was introduced to Japanese through his girlfriend, who took an equivalent course at UC Santa Cruz. He took 3 years of high school Spanish, but has not spoken it since he graduated from high school. He spends an average of 3 hours per week studying Japanese vocabulary and grammar forms.

Subject C: Subject C is a 22 year old undergraduate student at California College of the Arts. She is majoring in Sculpture and is computer literate. She took a course equivalent to Japanese 1A during the summer of 2005. She took 4 years of high school Spanish and has been teaching herself Japanese for the past few years. She was introduced to Japanese through anime and often reads manga in Japanese. She does not study Japanese on a regular basis, but continues to use self-paced textbooks from time to time.

Subject D: Subject D is a 23 year old UC Berkeley senior who previously took an introductory course in Japanese overseas. He is majoring in Psychology and has decent technical expertise. He decided to pick up learning Japanese in hopes of understanding untranslated Japanese anime cartoons as well as video game text and speech with games being released early in Japan. He speaks fluent Mandarin as well as Shanghainese as Chinese is his first language, giving him a distinct advantage when it comes to recognizing Kanji characters. He is not currently enrolled in any Japanese courses but is brushing up his skills in his spare time through self study textbooks (in fact he owns a copy of the same Japanese 1 textbook offered here at Berkeley). Subject D has other Japanese study aids ranging from a Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionary as well as VHS tapes and instructional DVDs that he bought in a previous trip to Japan.

Problem and Solution Overview (1 pt)

The most common way to teach oneself Japanese is through the use of textbooks that use various methods for allowing students to develop vocabulary while also allowing them to write in japanese. When teaching oneself Japanese from a textbook, without the aid of outside instruction, it is very difficult to tell if you are writing the characters correctly. Moreover, these characters have a specific order in which the strokes are made, which is commonly disregarded by beginning students. The underlying problem is that there is no feedback to the student as to whether or not what they are writing is correct. In order to check vocabulary or sentence structures, the student can compare his answers to the solutions manual of the textbook, which is a time consuming and error prone process.

The goal of our project is to give feedback to the users of these textbooks by digitizing what they have written and comparing it to what they should have written and how they should have written it. Through the use of a textbook that has been printed on Anoto paper, the student is able to fill in exercises in the book and he can optionally have the computer auto-grade his answers and make suggestions on what to improve, either by automatically generating flash cards or simply showing him the correct answer. This system is designed to include all of the benefits of current textbooks while adding extra features that will allow the student to study more effectively and more efficiently.

Contextual Inquiry - Interview Descriptions (15 pts)

Place: Subject A

I met this person at the Golden Bear Cafe, where I bought her some tater-tots. From there we went to the student learning center, which was the most convenient place on campus that we could sit down at a table. The environment was fairly quiet, but also fairly crowded. We sat on opposite sides of the table, next to a window in the far corner of the room.

Place: Subject B

I met this person at his house, which is where he normally studies Japanese. The environment was very quiet and intimate, allowing us to talk without distractions. We sat on his couch, using the coffee table as a writing surface.

Process:

For the interviews, I asked both subjects to work on their weekly Japanese 1A homework assignment while describing in detail the steps that they were taking in order to reach their answers. I stopped them several times during the interview to ask them to elaborate on the steps that they were performing, such as how exactly they went about reading the question in Japanese. Subject A told me that she breaks the sentences up into words by drawing lines between them before she attempts to read the sentence, she said that it was otherwise confusing where one word stops and another begins due to the fact that there is no spacing in between words in Japanese. Subject B said that he uses a more haphazard approach where he skims over the sentence to figure out what the general idea of the sentence was before actually reading it. Both subjects frequently had to refer to the vocabulary list at the end of the chapter in order to find out what new words meant. This process of flipping back and forth was time consuming, especially due to the fact that the list was at the end of the chapter and therefore harder to find than if it were listed by lesson in the back of the book. When searching for the translation of an English word, once they located the vocabulary list, it was not clear as to where in the list the word would be, as the list is in Japanese alphabetical order, which neither Subject A nor Subject B found to be helpful. After they were done with half of the homework assignment, I asked them to describe the methods that they use to learn new vocabulary words, also inquiring as to their reasoning behind using these methods. Subject A said that she writes new vocabulary words in romaji over and over again, therefore ingraining the pronounciation into her head. Subject B said that he uses digital flash cards to learn new vocabulary and therefore never actually writes the words, instead preferring to type them. Subject B said that while typing was a much faster method, it does not help him to remember the actual characters; therefore, he feels more comfortable speaking in Japanese than writing in Japanese.

Place:

I met this person at her house, which is where she normally studies Japanese. The environment was fairly quiet, except for her roommate watching television in the next room. We sat at her kitchen table in a dimly lit part of the living room.

Process:

For the interview, I asked her to do 3 of the exercises in her Genki Systems textbook, which she used during her her Japanese summer class. I stopped her several times during the interview to ask her to elaborate on the steps that she was taking, such as how exactly she knew what words were associated with certain drawings. She said that there was only one word in that chapter that could correctly be associated with the drawing, but that other vocabulary from throughout the book can make it confusing as to which word to use. After she was done with the 3 short exercises, I asked her to describe the methods that she uses to learn new vocabulary words, also inquiring as to her reasoning behind using these methods. She said that she writes out flash cards and separates them into different categories. She does not like the way that the vocabulary is presented in the vocabulary lists, as they do not follow any discernable pattern. When making a flash card for a verb, she writes the english word on one side and all of the conjugations of the verb in Japanese on the other side.

Place:

I met this person in the basement of the main stacks section of Moffitt library where I had set up an appointment with him in advance for the next time he planned to study Japanese. The two of us were able to find an enclosed area with no other people around, allowing for a complete standstill environment with absolutely no distractions nearby. We sat down at two adjacent study "cubbies" and I was able to turn my chair 90 degrees to observe my subject of interest in the well lit area.

Process:

For this interview, I asked Subject D if he would go about his intended plan of study as if I wasn't present and that I would observe his actions and behavior and then come up with questions to ask him through each step. He opened up his Japanese textbook and proceeded to work on one of the section exercises that contained "fill in the blank with the missing word" style. This is the first point where I stopped him and asked him to iterate the steps he would take to do solve the question to me, like how he would go about finding the correct word that fit in the blank. He insisted that he would need to recall knowledge from his previous lessons as sometimes the answer is not so directly present in the section simply because language need not be a linear learning process and rather more like constant adding to your knowledge pool. I observed him flipping and back forth between previous lessons in the textbook to get ideas on how to solve the current problem at hand. This lead me to think of a task or method to possibly reduce the inefficiency of cross-referencing and I got the idea of producing flashcards as mnemonic devices to help the learner. Further in my observations of Subject D, I asked him what he would do when he got to a Japanese word or phrase which he didn't know the meaning of and got the response that he would have to reference his Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionary to do a lookup as well as a translation. This could be greatly convenient in a situation where there are many words that the learner does not know and it would take a great deal of time to do dictionary seeks. I observed this to be a second problem of inefficiency and not to mention admittedly frequent dictionary lookups cause the user to get aggravated with a headache and sometimes he/she would just rather skip knowing the meaning of the word alltogether.

Shared Tasks:

The common tasks that were performed were: 1. Making flash cards to learn new vocabulary 2. Ordering flash cards by categories, such as nouns, verbs, etc. 3. Writing hard to read words in romaji 4. Using printed forms to test their vocabulary and writing skills.

Unique Events

1. Subject B uses a computer flash card application called Genius, which he says allows him to learn new vocabulary words much faster than writing the flash cards by hand. Instead of merely flipping the card over, the application can quiz the user by having them type hiragana straight into a box, which forces the user to really know the spelling of the word.
2. Subject A said that she does not follow stroke order when writing in Japanese. She also said that she would prefer not to know whether or not she was writing the characters in the correct stroke order. This contrasts with subject C, who says that she always follows stroke order when writing in Japanese and would have like to have a more efficient way of correcting herself when she uses the wrong stroke order.

Task Analysis Questions (5 pts)

1. Who is going to use system?
   • Japanese 1A Students, East-Asian language learners
2. What tasks do they now perform?
   • Practice writing.
   • Practice reading.
   • Recieved an evalution from teachers or tutors.
3. What tasks are desired?
   • Computer tutors.
   • Training software.
4. How are the tasks learned?
   • A student will need to learn how to use our software. They can read the tutorials or manuals. They should be more comfortable after they repeatedly use our software.
5. Where are the tasks performed?
   • There are two situations when the tasks performed: input and evaluation phase. For input phase, users can use an Anoto pen to take an input anywhere like at cafe, library, bus, or lecture room. For evalution phase, users can sit with their computer to recieve an evalution or coaching at home, or school library that has internet access.
6. What's the relationship between user & data?
   • Written, Drawing, Recieved an evaluation, Recieved a training.
7. What other tools does the user have?
   • Pencil, Paper, Dictionary, Thesaurus, Voice recorders, Laptop, Desktop computer
8. How do users communicate with each other?
   • Compared their works (Collaborating).
   • Evalution paper.
   • Being coached together.
9. How often are the tasks performed?
   • Depend on students. 2-3 times a day for practicing on write, and 3 times a week for Japanese class attendance.
10. What are the time constraints on the tasks?
    • The score system will stop taking more input when users pause or wait too long. Each Japanese character should be written with in 3 minutes.
11. What happens when things go wrong?
    • One possible problem is an inaccurate of the Japanese OCR. Users might not recieve a desired word. Our application should provide a warning message and make the best guess when it cannot determine the Japanese characters given by the users.
    • A flash card can be duplicated because users might write differently. We should provide many different ways to group a flash card based on meaning, word groups, similarity, number of strokes, or popularity. So that users will find any duplicated flash card and remove it.

Analysis of Tasks (10 pts)

Choose 6 tasks (2 easy, 2 moderate, 2 difficult tasks) and describe them. These should be real world tasks that have details (e.g., note-taking in a lecture).

Easy Tasks

Given a page of randomly placed pictures and associated words, connect the picture to the word.

This task consists of a worksheet that contains pictures and words in assorted random order pre-printed on digital paper. The goal is for the Japanese student to correctly identify which picture corresponds to which vocabulary word and then to draw a line connecting the two with the Anoto pen. We consider this to be an easy task because there is no OCR required and should be simple as long as the student follows directions.

Given a picture, fill in the blank with the corresponding word (only one correct answer)

This task is like the first task in that there exists a worksheet that contains pictures pre-printed on digital paper, but rather than having the answers printed in random order on the page, we choose to provide blanks beside each picture for the user to write in the word of the object they see in the picture. We consider this to be an easy task because we limit the fill-in-the-blank to only one possible correct answer and only basic OCR is required to check if the written word indeed matches the solution key.

Moderate Tasks

Creating flash cards by underlining words

This task involves the student underlining words he or she may not understand or have difficulty understanding the meaning of on pre-printed worksheets or the pre-printed textbook. We consider this a moderate task although no OCR is required because the slight difficulty arises in determining the length of the underline as it may range from one character or word all the way up to a phrase or sentence. Once the length of the underline is determined, analysis can be performed on the word or phrase once the pen is docked and communicating with the computer. Flashcards can be created with the underlined text printed on one side and the translation or dictionary definition on the other.

Filling in the blank and checking to see that the sentence makes sense (can have multiple correct answers)

This task involves an existing worksheet that contains pre-printed text on digital paper with certain areas blanked out in sentences as an exercise for the user to determine what goes in the blank. We consider this to be a moderate task because unlike the easy task, the blanks can vary with multiple correct answers and thus require more complex OCR to determine whether the student's answers are correct or not.

Hard Tasks

Tracking and scoring the stroke order when writing characters

This task involves tracking and scoring the stroke order when students write Japanese characters on digital paper. We consider this to be a hard task despite no OCR required because the Anoto pen is able to give accurate timestamps of each stroke, however assigning an assessment as to how well the student wrote each stroke is a much advanced procedure. For instance, the white box where the student is allowed to write the character in will have many dots in a grid (the basis of digital paper) and we would have to analyze the dots to see where they are colored in (where the student wrote) and at what time (stroke order) and on top of that assign a score to how well the student performed.

Copying/writing out characters (kanji) and checking to see if they are correctly drawn (proportions and orientation)

This task involves a pre-printed form with Kanji characters and white boxes beside them for the user to imitate and practice writing out the characters. We consider this to be a hard task because advanced OCR and a database of Kanji character breakdowns will be needed to recognize and assess whether the user wrote correctly. The main issues would be the proportions and orientation of what the user wrote in the white box as we would need to carefully analyze the size and placement of each pen stroke with respect to the grid and compare it to the correct proportions and orientation of the pre-printed word the user is trying to copy.

Interface Design (20 pts)

Our design maintains all of the benefits of current textbook based methods of learning Japanese and adds increased functionality through the use of the Anoto pen and paper. A large part of our design was based around how the software was an addition to an already existing stand-alone product. By printing textbooks on Anoto paper, the price of the product is not greatly affected and people who do not have Anoto pens can still use the textbooks as they normally would. For those willing to purchase the Anoto pen, the process of learning and reviewing vocabulary, kanji, and alphabets is made much more efficient and effective.

The interface for our software consists of four main functions:

Notebook: This is the default view of the program. The notebook function allows you to see the answers that were written in the notebook overlayed on top of a digital version of the textbook. This function is used to navigate through the notebook in order to find pages that you would like the system to correct or make flash cards for.

Flash Cards:If the user ever comes accross a word in the textbook that they cannot remember, and would like to make a flash card of, all he needs to do is underline the word. The system will automatically create flash cards for all underlined word. Flash cards can be added manually or deleted at the user's discretion. Flash cards will further have a feature that will allow the cards to be order in any way that the user likes, they can even be separated into different sets, therefore, if the user only wants to review select words then they can create a separate "review list", much like a "playlist" in itunes.

Vocab:The vocab function has lists of vocabulary separated by the lesson in which textbook introduces them. The vocab function also contains an English->Japanese and Japanese->English dictionary that allows the user to easily lookup words without needing to flip through the book. This function must be used in conjunction with the computer and is therefore of no use to the user that is on the go and away from the computer. This is meant to be used for reviewing purposes and for creating flash cards, it does not utilize the Anoto pen technology at all.

Score:All of the exercises in the textbook can be graded by the application in order to give feedback to the user about the progress that they are making. The user can select a page using the notebook function and then click on the score button to have the system grade that page. This eliminates the need to use solutions manuals to check your answers. There are several different tasks that the user can score, such as writing Kanji, which checks the stroke order, or matching pictures to words, which helps to increase the users vocabulary.

Step 1, Do the exercise in the workbook.

Step 2, Transfer data from the pen to the computer via bluetooth.

Step 3, Click the Score button.

Step 4, Double click a highlighted box, which indicates that incorrect stroke order was used.

Step 5, Review the proper stroke sequence.

Step 1, Underline the printed word that you don't recognize.

Step 2, Transfer data from the pen to the computer via bluetooth.

Step 3, Click the Flash Cards button.

Step 4, Click the Translate button to view in the other language.

Step 5, Review the meaning of the word.

Step 1, Do the exercise in the workbook.

Step 2, Transfer data from the pen to the computer via bluetooth.

Step 3, Click the Score button.

Step 4, Review the correct matchings, blue lines indicate matchings that were correct, red indicate matchings that were incorrect.

Analysis of Approach (5 pts)

Explain how your application takes advantage of the affordances of the Anoto system. If there are other technologies such as TabletPCs, PDAs, SmartBoards, etc. that could be used to perform the tasks your application addresses, you should explain why using the Anoto system is a better approach. List the pros and cons of your approach.

An Anoto pen and digital paper VS a Tablet PC

It is also possible to develop our system on a Tablet PC. However, we found that using an Anoto pen and digital paper is more feasible than a Tablet PC in terms of ease of use and portability. Here are the favorable and unfavorable circumstances of using an Anoto pen and digital paper over a Tablet PC:

Pros:

• Ease of use: Using an Anoto pen and digital paper is much simpler than using a Tablet PC because the pen-and-paper conceptual model is a more intuitive model. Writing on a paper provide a feeling of writing compared to write on a computer screen.
• Affordable: An Anoto pen is cheaper than a Tablet PC. Because not all students have a tablet PC, they would prefer to spend less money on buying an anoto pen.
• Mobility: It is easier to transport an Anoto pen than a Tablet PC. An Anoto pen take less space. Students would prefer to carry an Anoto pen.

Cons:

• No real-time feedback: An Anoto pen cannot provide real-time feedback. Thus, a student might be unsure whether they have already submitted their writing.
• A Tablet PC comes with a nice OCR package. We have to rely on an open-source * OCR package when we are using An Anoto pen.
• A Tablet PC has a wireless connection so users can easily submit their work online and recieve instant feedback.