Assessing usability evaluation methods on their effectiveness to elicit verbal comments from children subjects

An exploratory study is described looking at children's ability to provide verbal comments in usability evaluation sessions. Six evaluation methods were applied to test an interactive toy by children aged 6 and 7. The results show that most verbal comments were gathered during Active Intervention sessions, by asking children questions during tasks. Unexpectedly, the Co-Discovery sessions were less successful, because children did not collaborate very well. Children also provided useful comments in the Thinking Aloud, Retrospection, and Peer Tutoring sessions. They could reflect on their actions at the end of Retrospection sessions, and were able to teach other children how to interact with the toy in Peer Tutoring sessions.