research-article

Measuring the usability and capability of App inventor to create mobile Applications

Authors:

Hal AbelsonAuthors Info & Claims

PROMOTO 2015: Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Programming for Mobile and Touch

Pages 1 - 8

https://doi.org/10.1145/2824823.2824824

Published: 27 October 2015 Publication History

Abstract

MIT App Inventor is a web service that enables users with little to no previous programming experience to create mobile applications using a visual blocks language. We analyze a sample of 5,228 random projects from the corpus of 9.7 million and group projects by functionality. We then use the number of unique blocks in projects as a metric to better understand the usability and realized capability of using App Inventor to implement specific functionalities. We introduce the notion of a usability score and our results indicate that introductory tutorials heavily influence the usability of App Inventor to implement particular functionalities. Our findings suggest that the sequential nature of App Inventor's learning resources results in users realizing only a portion of App Inventor's capabilities and propose improvements to these learning resources that are transferable to other programming environments and tools.

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Cited By

Lin YLemos MNeuschaefer-Rube C(2022)Digital Health and Learning in Speech-Language Pathology, Phoniatrics, and Otolaryngology: Survey Study for Designing a Digital Learning Toolbox AppJMIR Medical Education10.2196/340428:2(e34042)Online publication date: 27-Apr-2022
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Fronza ICorral LWang XPahl CPéraire CSerebrenik A(2022)Keeping fun aliveProceedings of the ACM/IEEE 44th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3510456.3514153(165-175)Online publication date: 21-May-2022
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Fronza ICorral LWang XPahl C(2022)Keeping Fun Alive: an Experience Report on Running Online Coding Camps2022 IEEE/ACM 44th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training (ICSE-SEET)10.1109/ICSE-SEET55299.2022.9794249(165-175)Online publication date: May-2022
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Index Terms

Measuring the usability and capability of App inventor to create mobile Applications
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)

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cover image ACM Conferences

PROMOTO 2015: Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Programming for Mobile and Touch

October 2015

24 pages

ISBN:9781450339087

DOI:10.1145/2824823

Program Chairs:
Steven D. Fraser,
Alberto Sillitti

Copyright © 2015 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 27 October 2015

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SIGPLAN

SPLASH '15: Conference on Systems, Programming, Languages, and Applications: Software for Humanity

October 27, 2015

PA, Pittsburgh, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 6 of 11 submissions, 55%

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Cited By

Lin YLemos MNeuschaefer-Rube C(2022)Digital Health and Learning in Speech-Language Pathology, Phoniatrics, and Otolaryngology: Survey Study for Designing a Digital Learning Toolbox AppJMIR Medical Education10.2196/340428:2(e34042)Online publication date: 27-Apr-2022
https://doi.org/10.2196/34042
Fronza ICorral LWang XPahl CPéraire CSerebrenik A(2022)Keeping fun aliveProceedings of the ACM/IEEE 44th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3510456.3514153(165-175)Online publication date: 21-May-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3510456.3514153
Fronza ICorral LWang XPahl C(2022)Keeping Fun Alive: an Experience Report on Running Online Coding Camps2022 IEEE/ACM 44th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training (ICSE-SEET)10.1109/ICSE-SEET55299.2022.9794249(165-175)Online publication date: May-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE-SEET55299.2022.9794249
da Cruz Alves NGresse von Wangenheim CRossa Hauck J(2020)Teaching Programming to Novices: A Large-scale Analysis of App Inventor Projects2020 XV Conferencia Latinoamericana de Tecnologias de Aprendizaje (LACLO)10.1109/LACLO50806.2020.9381172(1-10)Online publication date: 19-Oct-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/LACLO50806.2020.9381172
Lambić DĐorić BIvakić S(2020)Investigating the effect of the use of code.org on younger elementary school students’ attitudes towards programmingBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2020.178193140:16(1784-1795)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2020
https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2020.1781931
Lliteras AGrigera JCorporaal FDi Claudio FGordillo S(2020)A Flexible Web Authoring Tool for Building Mobile Learning ExperiencesComputer Science – CACIC 201910.1007/978-3-030-48325-8_5(69-83)Online publication date: 14-May-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48325-8_5
Park YShin Y(2019)Comparing the Effectiveness of Scratch and App Inventor with Regard to Learning Computational Thinking ConceptsElectronics10.3390/electronics81112698:11(1269)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2019
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics8111269
Ariffin SYatim MDaud F(2019)Identification of Usability Impact of Mobile Learning STEM in a Local University ContextProceedings of the 5th International ACM In-Cooperation HCI and UX Conference10.1145/3328243.3328257(106-115)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2019
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Hakim IChristover DJaya Marindra A(2019)Implementation of an Image Processing based Smart Parking System using Haar-Cascade Method2019 IEEE 9th Symposium on Computer Applications & Industrial Electronics (ISCAIE)10.1109/ISCAIE.2019.8743906(222-227)Online publication date: Apr-2019
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Morales JRusu CBotella FQuinones D(2019)Programmer eXperience: A Systematic Literature ReviewIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2019.29201247(71079-71094)Online publication date: 2019
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