Usability of an authoring tool for generalised scenario creation for signsupport

Abstract

This paper presents the usability testing results for an authoring tool that generalises scenario creation for a tool called SignSupport. SignSupport is a mobile communication tool for Deaf people that currently runs on an Android smartphone. The authoring tool is computer-based software that helps a domain expert, with little or no programming skills, design and populate a limited domain conversation scenario between a Deaf person and a hearing person, e.g., when a Deaf patient collects medication at a hospital pharmacy or when a Deaf learner is taking a computer literacy course. SignSupport provides instructions to the Deaf person in signed language videos on a mobile device. The authoring tool enables the creation and population of such scenarios on a computer for subsequent 'playback' on a mobile device. The output of this authoring tool is an XML script, alongside a repository of media files that can be used to render the SignSupport mobile app on any platform. Our concern now is to iteratively develop the user interface for the authoring tool, focusing on the domain experts who create the overall flow and content for a given scenario. The current authoring tool was evaluated for usability; for both pharmacy and ICDL course scenarios with purposive sampling. The findings suggest that the authoring tool can generalise SignSupport for multiple limited domain scenarios, mobile platforms and signed languages.