Evaluation of User-Interface Designs for Educational Feedback Software for ASL Students

Facilitating students learning American Sign Language (ASL) promotes inclusion and communication for people who are Deaf, yet students learning ASL face challenges. In a classroom setting, instructors are limited in how frequently they can provide feedback on student’s work, typically with many students submitting videos of their signing. Thus, we investigate software to analyze videos of ASL students’ signing and provide immediate, albeit limited, feedback about aspects of a student’s movements that are likely errors. In this study, we have conducted an investigation of a wide variety of designs for the presentation of feedback to ASL students, with a focus on the students’ subjective judgments and preferences for any specific features and whether or not the feedback provided is easily understood. As part of an interview-based study, we conducted 3 rounds of iterative re-designs with 24 participants. At each round, a static design prototype was shown to 8 participants, who provided qualitative feedback. Open-ended interview questions asked for opinions on the visual appearance of feedback messages and the language used to convey errors. At each round, common themes were extracted from the data, and changes were made to the designs. We found that participants were comfortable in suggesting specific design modifications and in requesting additional features, which were incorporated into the designs shown in the prototypes used in the subsequent round. The contribution of this research is to provide guidance on the future development of language-learning feedback systems for sign-language.