Pappagaio: user centered design for a second language vocabulary learning android application

Abstract

The mobile devices usage has been growing ever since. This grow is linked to the hardware and software advance and the ability to do activities: such as learning a Second Language (L2), only possible before using other technologies. There is a variety of applications for second language vocabulary acquisition (Duolingo, Memrise, Livemocha, etc), most of them use self learning methodologies or limited number of games. Pappagaio is a user centered application focused on the communication between teachers and students while teaching/learning vocabulary in L2. Teachers will use mobile devices to create multimedia content (text, audio and images) and students will use this guided content throughout games as hangman, memory card or other associative games. In this paper, we will focus on the development of the user centered design for an Android application. The methods undertaken to build and test Pappagaio’s prototype were online questionnaires, to understand the actual environment of teaching vocabulary in L2; Sketches, mockups and scenarios, to assist the prototype’s interface design process; to test the prototype, a Collaborative Heuristic Evaluation followed by a User testing with Think-aloud method were conducted. The main goal of the project was to solve the extra-class vocabulary learning experience and, teachers, who tested it, they had shown low or inexistent resistance to use Pappagaio. For future work, there is a need for further testing, involving the whole application with a wider range of teachers and students for a long-term knowledge acquisition study.