The Concept Maps Method as a Tool to Evaluate the Usability of APIs

Jens Gerken; Hans-Christian Jetter; Michael Zöllner; Mario Mader; Harald Reiterer

doi:10.1145/1978942.1979445

The Concept Maps Method as a Tool to Evaluate the Usability of APIs

Jens Gerken, Hans-Christian Jetter, Michael Zöllner, Mario Mader, Harald Reiterer

Research Center Hagenberg

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedings › Conference contribution › peer-review

24 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Application programming interfaces (APIs) are the interfaces to existing code structures, such as widgets, frameworks, or toolkits. Therefore, they very much do have an impact on the quality of the resulting system. So, ensuring that developers can make the most out of them is an important challenge. However standard usability evaluation methods as known from HCI have limitations in grasping the interaction between developer and API as most IDEs (essentially the GUI) capture only part of it. In this paper we present the Concept Map method to study the usability of an API over time. This allows us to elicit the mental model of a programmer when using an API and thereby identify usability issues and learning barriers and their development over time.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	CHI 2011 - 29th Annual CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Conference Proceedings and Extended Abstracts
Publisher	ACM Press
Pages	3373-3382
Number of pages	10
ISBN (Print)	9781450302289
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/1978942.1979445
Publication status	Published - 2011
Event	ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '11) - Vancouver, BC, Canada Duration: 7 May 2011 → 12 May 2011 http://www.chi2011.org/

Publication series

Name	Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings

Conference

Conference	ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '11)
Country/Territory	Canada
City	Vancouver, BC
Period	07.05.2011 → 12.05.2011
Internet address	http://www.chi2011.org/

Keywords

Api usability
Concept maps
Evaluation method
Longitudinal

Access to Document

10.1145/1978942.1979445

Cite this

Gerken, J., Jetter, H.-C., Zöllner, M., Mader, M., & Reiterer, H. (2011). The Concept Maps Method as a Tool to Evaluate the Usability of APIs. In CHI 2011 - 29th Annual CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Conference Proceedings and Extended Abstracts (pp. 3373-3382). (Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings). ACM Press. https://doi.org/10.1145/1978942.1979445

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Gerken, J, Jetter, H-C, Zöllner, M, Mader, M & Reiterer, H 2011, The Concept Maps Method as a Tool to Evaluate the Usability of APIs. in CHI 2011 - 29th Annual CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Conference Proceedings and Extended Abstracts. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings, ACM Press, pp. 3373-3382, ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '11), Vancouver, BC, Canada, 07.05.2011. https://doi.org/10.1145/1978942.1979445

The Concept Maps Method as a Tool to Evaluate the Usability of APIs. / Gerken, Jens; Jetter, Hans-Christian; Zöllner, Michael et al.
CHI 2011 - 29th Annual CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Conference Proceedings and Extended Abstracts. ACM Press, 2011. p. 3373-3382 (Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedings › Conference contribution › peer-review

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KW - Evaluation method

KW - Longitudinal

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Gerken J, Jetter HC, Zöllner M, Mader M, Reiterer H. The Concept Maps Method as a Tool to Evaluate the Usability of APIs. In CHI 2011 - 29th Annual CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Conference Proceedings and Extended Abstracts. ACM Press. 2011. p. 3373-3382. (Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings). doi: 10.1145/1978942.1979445

The Concept Maps Method as a Tool to Evaluate the Usability of APIs

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