Evaluating Usability of Mobile-Based Augmented Reality Learning Environments for Early Childhood

Adults and kids struggle equally, if they have to focus on a topic at hand for longer durations. However, teaching the latter can be very challenging as they get easily distracted too. Particularly, while using mobile-based Augmented Reality applications for teaching kids, there are associated problems of small screen size, complex functionality and inconsistency. As per the existing literature, there are no clear design principles or guidelines that can be considered while designing and developing mobile AR applications, particularly for kids. This paper presents 23 identified usability principles that are further used to develop an interactive mobile-based AR application for learning basic English. The usability and suitability of the proposed application from users’ perception was established using qualitative and quantitative analysis. Analysis of the students’ behavior and teachers’ interviews substantiates the use of proposed application in classrooms. Thirty pre-schoolers and 12 kindergarten teachers participated in this study. The results showed that the developed ARLE is efficient, effective, and highly usable for the kids. Further, the same identified usability principles can be effectively referred by researchers and developers while developing AR applications for kindergarten kids.