A SCAFFOLDING APPROACH TOWARDS DESIGNING BEGINNER-FRIENDLY TOOLKITS

Abstract

Scaffolding has traditionally been used to refer to the process by which a more knowledgeable peer assists a learner. Different from the traditional views, recent version of scaffolding on interactive learning environment has referred to ways that software itself can scaffold learners rather than only knowledgeable peers. The thesis aims to adopt these scaffolding approaches from education to designing toolkits that scaffold beginners to use. First of all, from the literature, this thesis develops three scaffolding philosophies towards designing beginner-friendly toolkits: 1) Scaffolding process management; 2) Scaffolding sense-making; 3) Scaffolding integration. Secondly, the thesis designs and implements three toolkits NexP, MapVideo and WADE. They adopt the three scaffolding philosophies and assist beginners to address HCI-related problems. Finally, this thesis evaluates the three toolkits against the state-of-the-arts in various user studies and demonstrates their usability for beginner use. The thesis provides a discussion on how to adopt the scaffolding philosophies to designing other applications.