Wikis are simple to use, asynchronous, Web-based collaborative hypertext
authoring systems which are quickly gaining in popularity. In spite
of much anecdotal evidence to the effect that wikis are usable by
non technical experts, this has never been studied formally. In this
paper, we studied the usability of a wiki through observation and
problem-solving interaction with several children who used the tool
to collaboratively author hypertext stories over several sessions.
The children received a minimal amount of instruction, but were able
to ask for help during their work sessions. Despite minimal instruction,
5 out of 6 teams were able to complete their story. Our data indicate
that the major usability problems were related to hyperlink management.
We report on this and other usability issues, and provide suggestions
for improving the usability of wikis. Our analysis and conclusions
also apply to hypertext authoring with non wiki-based tools.
%0 Conference Paper
%1 DePV05
%A Desilets, Alain
%A Paquet, Sebastien
%A Vinson, Norman G.
%B WikiSym '05: Proceedings of the 2005 international symposium on Wikis
%C New York, NY, USA
%D 2005
%I ACM Press
%K usability wikis
%P 3--15
%R 10.1145/1104973.1104974
%T Are wikis usable?
%U http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1104973.1104974
%X Wikis are simple to use, asynchronous, Web-based collaborative hypertext
authoring systems which are quickly gaining in popularity. In spite
of much anecdotal evidence to the effect that wikis are usable by
non technical experts, this has never been studied formally. In this
paper, we studied the usability of a wiki through observation and
problem-solving interaction with several children who used the tool
to collaboratively author hypertext stories over several sessions.
The children received a minimal amount of instruction, but were able
to ask for help during their work sessions. Despite minimal instruction,
5 out of 6 teams were able to complete their story. Our data indicate
that the major usability problems were related to hyperlink management.
We report on this and other usability issues, and provide suggestions
for improving the usability of wikis. Our analysis and conclusions
also apply to hypertext authoring with non wiki-based tools.
%@ 1595931112
@inproceedings{DePV05,
abstract = {Wikis are simple to use, asynchronous, Web-based collaborative hypertext
authoring systems which are quickly gaining in popularity. In spite
of much anecdotal evidence to the effect that wikis are usable by
non technical experts, this has never been studied formally. In this
paper, we studied the usability of a wiki through observation and
problem-solving interaction with several children who used the tool
to collaboratively author hypertext stories over several sessions.
The children received a minimal amount of instruction, but were able
to ask for help during their work sessions. Despite minimal instruction,
5 out of 6 teams were able to complete their story. Our data indicate
that the major usability problems were related to hyperlink management.
We report on this and other usability issues, and provide suggestions
for improving the usability of wikis. Our analysis and conclusions
also apply to hypertext authoring with non wiki-based tools.},
added-at = {2008-01-04T16:59:10.000+0100},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
author = {Desilets, Alain and Paquet, Sebastien and Vinson, Norman G.},
biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/252f0c294fe1e8354cae7a0f76f4623ab/michael},
booktitle = {WikiSym '05: Proceedings of the 2005 international symposium on Wikis},
citeulike-article-id = {499806},
doi = {10.1145/1104973.1104974},
file = {DePV05.pdf:web2.0\\DePV05.pdf:PDF},
interhash = {d594c358a53de54167fed186e610ccae},
intrahash = {52f0c294fe1e8354cae7a0f76f4623ab},
isbn = {1595931112},
keywords = {usability wikis},
pages = {3--15},
priority = {5},
publisher = {ACM Press},
timestamp = {2008-08-13T12:08:32.000+0200},
title = {Are wikis usable?},
url = {http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1104973.1104974},
year = 2005
}