Abstract

The following user study attempts to better understand what users perceive themselves to have learned after interacting with VizAbility™.

According to the goals of the product, VizAbility™ is a "modular 'visual thinking kit', designed to help you discover, explore and improve your natural visual abilities." Such a goal makes it difficult to assess the product's impact and success because there are fewer established assessment standards on which to measure visual thinking improvements than there are for traditional subject matters. Also since visual thinking is a multidisciplinary skill, it poses additional challenges concerning the perception of its effects. This study hopes to gather information into what learners perceive they are learning from VizAbility™. With this information we hope to identify specific educational values that the software fosters.

The perception of learning gathered by the study, represents the opinions of users after a one hour sitting interacting with the VizAbility™ CD-ROM. The group of the users tested are all in their mid-twenties and includes two females and one male.

Since VizAbility™ was based on a text book and course (ME 101) given to Stanford University mechanical engineering students, we felt it would be best to test users who are slightly elder to the original target group to gain insight in the perceived relevance of visual thinking for the jobs.