Touch Gesture Performance of Kindergarten Children in E-learning Applications: A Case Study in Sri Lanka

Abstract

With the advancement of technology, e-learning has become a major component of education. Hence, parents now show more interest in games and educational applications based on touch sensitive devices. Today, even very small children play with touch screen devices. Every day, many tablet-based educational apps are introduced to app stores with the objective of improving knowledge of small children and providing them with some sort of edutainment. But recent research shows that most of these apps are not successful due to usability issues with small children. The reason for this is the app developers’ lack of understanding of the abilities and limitations of children that vary with their age as well as their exposure to technology. Hence, most of the children find it difficult to use the apps due to their inability to perform the gestures or understand the concepts. Therefore, most of the children targeted apps are not as successful as anticipated. There are existing studies on gesture performance, but many of them focus on children in developed countries. The gesture performance of a small child may be affected by factors such as exposure to the latest technologies, socio-economic background of the child and native language. Hence, this research is focused on analyzing the gesture performance of children of ages 3 to 5 (Kindergarten level) in Sri Lanka. This paper also makes recommendations on criteria that will ensure better gesture performance by making some changes to interface design for children targeted applications.