research-article

Leveraging teenagers feedback in the development of a domain-specific language: the case of programming low-cost robots

Authors:

Ankica Barišić,

João Cambeiro,

Miguel Goulão,

Tarquínio MotaAuthors Info & Claims

SAC '18: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing

Pages 1221 - 1229

https://doi.org/10.1145/3167132.3167264

Published: 09 April 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) empower end-users to express software tasks that were traditionally developed by software engineers. DSLs allow users to express themselves in terms closer to the way they think about their problems, rather than in computational terms. However, conceiving a DSL with an adequate user experience for its end-users is not a trivial task, and the process of engineering that adequacy tends to be performed ad-hoc. The Gyro Creator Language (GCL) is an open-source DSL for controlling low-cost rover-like Arduino robots, designed for being used by teenagers with no previous computing skills, so they can be introduced to programming in a fun way. In this paper, we discuss an iterative process building on teenagers' early feedback, collected in a series of empirical evaluations with 128 teenagers, and how this has helped us driving GCL to a competitive level in terms of usability, when compared to well-established alternatives such as Lego, or Scratch.

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Cited By

Vaiani GPaternò F(2024)End-User Development for Human-Robot Interaction: Results and Trends in an Emerging FieldProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36611468:EICS(1-40)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3661146
Rennels LChasins S(2023)How Domain Experts Use an Embedded DSLProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36228517:OOPSLA2(1499-1530)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3622851
Borum HSeidl CSyriani ESahraoui H(2022)Survey of established practices in the life cycle of domain-specific languagesProceedings of the 25th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems10.1145/3550355.3552413(266-277)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3550355.3552413
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Leveraging teenagers feedback in the development of a domain-specific language: the case of programming low-cost robots
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Context specific languages
      1. Domain specific languages
      2. Visual languages
  2. Software organization and properties
    1. Extra-functional properties
      1. Software usability

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cover image ACM Conferences

SAC '18: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing

April 2018

2327 pages

ISBN:9781450351911

DOI:10.1145/3167132

Conference Chairs:
Hisham M. Haddad
Kennesaw State University
,
Roger L. Wainwright
University of Tulsa
,
Richard Chbeir
University of Pau & Pays Adour, France

Copyright © 2018 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 09 April 2018

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Fundação Para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal

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SAC 2018: Symposium on Applied Computing

April 9 - 13, 2018

Pau, France

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Overall Acceptance Rate 1,650 of 6,669 submissions, 25%

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Cited By

Vaiani GPaternò F(2024)End-User Development for Human-Robot Interaction: Results and Trends in an Emerging FieldProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36611468:EICS(1-40)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3661146
Rennels LChasins S(2023)How Domain Experts Use an Embedded DSLProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36228517:OOPSLA2(1499-1530)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3622851
Borum HSeidl CSyriani ESahraoui H(2022)Survey of established practices in the life cycle of domain-specific languagesProceedings of the 25th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems10.1145/3550355.3552413(266-277)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3550355.3552413
Ajaykumar GSteele MHuang C(2021)A Survey on End-User Robot ProgrammingACM Computing Surveys10.1145/346681954:8(1-36)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3466819
Poltronieri IPedroso AZorzo ABernardino Mde Borba Campos M(2021)Is Usability Evaluation of DSL Still a Trending Topic?Human-Computer Interaction. Theory, Methods and Tools10.1007/978-3-030-78462-1_23(299-317)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78462-1_23

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