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Abstract— Learning application for children is developed to aid children in their learning. However, this objective is often unfulfilled because children are forced to follow developer’s experience in interaction with the application, thus it affects user dissatisfaction on the application. This condition is caused by developer’s lack of awareness to involve user experience in the application development stage, with software requirement specification (SRS) is created without detail information of children experience as user that does not satisfy principles of designing learning application for children. Various SRS components should be adjusted to correspond with children requirements based on the principles of designing learning application for children. The main SRS component in communicating children experience as user is user characteristic that describes children behavior and learning styles. Moreover, information of other components could be adjusted with content of user characteristic to eliminate overlapping of children user experience requirement. This paper also describes connection of principles of designing of learning application for children with SRS components to achieve application usability.

Index Terms— User Experience, User Characteristic, Software Requirement Specification, Learning Application for children.

I. INTRODUCTION

There is a growing demand for learning application for children. Data from Statistics Indonesia shows, the market projection of children application in 2015 reached 69 millions or approximately 27% of population of Indonesia [1]. This condition demand application that meets the usability and user satisfaction requirement to achieve its personal goals [2].

Many applications are built that do not meet the usability so that users have difficulty when interacting[3]. Practitioners need to evaluate user experience in early stage of application development [4]. Behavior and requirement of every child in learning are varied as they are

influenced by child characteristic. Children involvement in early stage of learning application development is necessary, yet children are currently involved only in the testing stage [5].

Proper approach for acquiring children experience as user of the learning application is necessary [6]. Piaget’s states that children have four developmental stages that have specific perception, cognitive, and motoric challenges [7]. The most important aspect in integrating information technology to children learning is ensuring the application fits the children development stage [8].

User experience process cannot is integral in the

application development stage as it focuses on interaction

between user and the application [4]. User’s perception,

cognitive, and motoric are influencing attributes of user

experience[9]. Children involvement as user in application

development is essential to ensure user experience is met

in the application [10]. Direct children involvement in

application develop will help to create proper design to

represent children user experience [11].

In software development, creating software requirement

specification (SRS) is not simply documenting the developed

application [12]. SRS is required by developer as a guide

comprised of developed software system description.

Improper SRS creation could result in failure of

communicating the requirements that consequently

resulted in lack of quality of the developed application [13].

Various components in SRS must describe and explain

requirements specification based on user needs [12]. In

developing learning application for children, SRS should

provide information related to children experience as user

during their learning process to develop learning aplication

that correlates with children behaviour, learning

experience, and development stage. Therefore, this study

will explain SRS components required to provide clear user

experience to satisfy design principles of learning

application for children.

II. LITERATURE REVIEW

A. User Experience (UX)

User experience is a consequence of user internal

condition, designed system characteristic and context (or

[1,2]Mira Kania Sabariah, [1]Paulus Insap Santosa, [1]Ridi Ferdiana [1]Electrical Engineering and Information Technology Department

Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia [2]School of Computing

Telkom University, Bandung, Indonesia

User Experience Analysis in Software Requirements Specification (SRS) of Learning

Application for Children

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environment) where the interaction occurs [14]. User will

be satisfied when interacting with application if user

experience is clearly provided in the application [15]. It is

clear from this definiton that user emotion and expectation

are essential in user experience of designed system [16].

Development should understand user representatives,

work environment, interaction and emotional reaction in

designing a system [14]. Modern technology interacts and

communicates through an interface to create new user

experience influenced by old user experience [17]. Hence,

involving user experience in designing a system interface is

integral to achieve system usability [16].

It is important to explore users’ affordance of the

product in user experience through various components,

such as experience affordance, use affordance, effect

affordance and manipulation affordance[18]. Experience

affordance is aimed to explore information related to

proper use by the users. Meanwhile, use affordance’s

objective is to explore information related to model of

users’ mental and plan of implementation. Effect

affordance is conducted to obtain information related with

cultural symbols, causative relations, and other solutions

while the aim of manipulation affordance is to comprehend

perceptual information regarding ease of interaction with

application.

B. Design Principles of Learning Application for Children

There are 4 development stages of children with distinctive cognitive, perceptual, and motoric aspects [19]. Learning application for children is designed to help children in their learning, thus several principles should be considered in developing the application. Seven principles that must be considered in developing learning application for children are [20] : (i) equitable use, (ii) flexibility in use, (iii) simple and intuitive, (iv) perceptible information, (v) tolerance of error, (vi) low physical effort, and (vii) size and space for approach and use.

Principle of ‘Equitable use’ means that application should

avoid segregation in providing access, which means that all

users with various ability should be able to access the

application. Principle of ‘Flexibility in use’ can be translated

as application design ability to meet children learning

requirements. Meanwhile, principle of ‘Simple and

intuitive’ means that the application should be easy to

comprehend by the children.

The definition of ‘Perceptible information’ principle is

effective communication of information in application

through various mediums. The application should be

designed based on the princple of ‘Tolerance of error’ that

means unintentional mistakes should be tolerated.

Furthermore, the application should meet ‘Low physical

effort’ principle that means children are comfortable using

the application, and ‘Size and space for approach and use’

principle that means an application should consider the size

and space of use.

C. Software Requirements Specification

Software Requirements specification (SRS) is a description of developed software system [13]. The functional and non-functional requirement will be explained in SRS, which include set of cases of implementation that illustrate user interaction provided by the software. IEEE Standard generally describes various components related with requirement, including (i) Product perspective; (ii) Product functions; (iii) User characteristics; (iv) Operating Environment; (v) Constraints; (vi) Assumptions and dependencies; (vii) Apportioning of requirements [21].

Component of ‘Product perspective’ explains the

general illustration of developed application and external

interface requirements that comprised of user interfaces,

hardware interfaces, software interfaces and

communications interfaces[13]. Meanwhile, component of

‘Product functions’ explains the main functions of

developed application. Component of ‘User characteristics’

describes characteristic or profile of developed application

users including education background, experience, and

technical proficiency. In this component, user experience

can be identified in detail [18]. Thus, the user requirements

that contain the specifications of the user's tasks can be

present in the system[22].

In the component of ‘Operating environment’,

infrastructure of hardware and software of developed

system are explained while the component of ‘Constraints’

describes developer’s limitation in developing the

application. Component of ‘Assumptions and

dependencies’ explain interaction among all SRS

components that enables incidental change. Lastly,

component of ‘Apportioning of requirements’ identifies

possible delayed requirement for the future version of the

system.

III. METHODOLOGY

This is a paper based on literature review regarding analysis of user experience in SRS of learning application of children. The review was conducted based on related articles in google scholar, ACM digital library, science direct and IEEE xplore with the keywords of user experience for children, children persona, software requirements specification, learning application for children. Unfortunately, there are few studies regarding these topics. The review also conducted on several textbooks regarding these topics. After reviewing the literatures, analysis of the study objective was conducted.

IV. ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

The study objective was to analyze user experience in SRS of learning application for children in order to aid developers in establishing SRS based on children experience as user in every component to satisfy the principles of designing learning application for children, which means that the application usability is met indirectly. [23]. Table 1 displays interconnection of each SRS component with the

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principles of designing learning application for children. The interconnection was based on the need of clear explanation of every requirement specification to satisfy the objective of the principles of designing learning application for children. Since the learning application for children in this study is intended to be operated on stand-alone computers or based on mobile application, there were only 4 components that should be considered: product perspective, product functions, user characteristics and operating environment.

Product perspective of developed learning application should consider children experience, for example it should be based on mobile technology since children prefers this technology generally. The content of the learning application should be considered in accordance with children development stage. External interface requirements, such as user interface should consider children cognitive and motoric development stage [24].

In ubiquitous computing environment, tangible user interface in children learning environment is recently developed. The objective is to provide alternative of graphics user interface (GUI) to enable direct manipulation by children, thus system control and navigation are achieved by selecting and positioning physical objects instead of their representatives [25]. Hardware interfaces and software interface should support user interface that considers children ability based on their development stage. For example, the use of interaction tools such as mouse or pen is described in hardware interface based on user interface. Meanwhile, software interface of learning application of children is not developed as sophisticated as application for adult users. In learning application for children, its interconnection with other applications does not need to be described. The operating system used in the application is described in software interface. Using technology based on mobile technology to develop the learning application at present is believed to be able to imporve children learning motivation [26].

Product functions describe set of tasks require in

learning application for children. In this component, described task must be in line with contents of developed application with consideration of children requirement, ability, and skills [27]. Meanwhile, in component of user characteristics, SRS of learning application of children should describe children characteristic/profile that can illustrate their requirement, ability based on development stage, and experience that shows their learning behaviour [28]. The component of user characteristics is significantly related to achievement of nearly all principles of designing learning application for children. Aspects related to user profile for the application in SRS are displayed in Table 2 [29]. Personal information and disability are obtained from users’ registration. Meanwhile, skills ability, learning styles, behavior, emotion and motivation are observed dynamically during interaction in learning system.

Operating environment in learning application for children should consider the use of learning medium. Application based on mobile technology is a trend for application targeted for children nowadays as they are used to pen-based computing interaction and tablets, thus these mediums are selected for this application [30]. Medium selection should be based on children experience, knowledge, and motoric [31]. Operating environment is connected with all principles of designing learning application for children, hence their experience should be thoroughly considered in this component.

Principles of ‘Flexibility in use’, ‘Simple and intuitive’ and ‘Size and space for approach and use’ are related to all four SRS components while principle of ‘Equitable use’ only connected with SRS components of product perspective, user characteristics and operating environment. Meanwhile, principles of ‘Perceptible information’, ‘Tolerance with error’ and ‘Low physical error’ do not related to product perspective component, since this component only focuses on general description of developed learning application instead of its detailed design.

Table 1. Relation among SRS components and principles of designing learning application

Product perspective

Product functions

User characteristics

Operating Environment

Equitable use -

Flexibility in use Simple and intuitive

Perceptible information -

Tolerance of error -

Low physical effort - Size and space for approach and use

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Table 2. Aspects of children profile

Attribute Description

Personal Information Involving essential important to define requirement and stage of learning, such as name, age, gender, and academic year.

Skills Ability Defining abilities that are considered in development of learning strategy.

Disability (physical/cognitive) Describing physical disablity (if any) that could impair children cognitive function.

Learning Styles Various method conducted to collect, process, and arrange information. Learning styles influence user preference and guide the adaptation on system navigation.

Behavior/Academic Notes of user dynamic information are obtained from his activities, such as time required to conduct activities, number of properly finished activities, and other information.

Emotion Detectable reaction as children interact with technology in their learning process.

Motivation Specific activity conducted by children that lasts until they finish the activity.

V. CONCLUSION

It can be concluded that not all SRS components are involved in creating SRS of learning application for children. The important SRS components are children requirements, ability based on the development stage, and experience that illustrates their behaviours. These components are product perspective, product functions, user characteristic and operating environment.

User characteristic is an essential part in describing children profile related with information of their experience as user in SRS. In this component, children behaviour and learning styles are described in detail. These information will enable developer to create proper design of learning application that corresponds with children requirement. User characteristic also helps developer in reducing or even eliminating overlapping of children user experience requirement and other components, such as access medium selection in operating environment component, where it is based on children experience, knowledge, and their motoric function that are already provided in user characteristic component.

Therefore, clear descripiton of children experience as user in SRS components will enable developer to implement it in the developed learning application and consequently satisfy the principles of designing learning application for children. This means that the goals and usability of the application are achieved.

ACKNOLEDGEMENTS

This research was supported by The Indonesia Endowment Fund for Education ( Lembaga Pengelola Dana Pendidikan/LPDP).

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