Usability evaluation of an educational robot for STEM areas

This work was partially funded by National Funds through the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, in the context of the project UID/CEC/00127/2019.This article describes the development cycle of an educational robot designed to act as an interdisciplinary teaching tool integrated into the curriculum of STEM areas (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). We focused on the creation of the alpha version of the prototype and its heuristic evaluation by three experts, with the objective of appraising both usability and potential design problems. After all the issues and suggestions from the experts have been resolved and implemented, a beta version was developed and evaluated in its usability by five representatives of end-users with different age ranges and robotics knowledge. The System Usability Scale score of 92.5 points - Best Imaginable - show a very stable and satisfactory robot, with almost no usability problems detected.This work is partially financed by the ERDF-European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation - COMPETE 2020 Program within project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006961, and by National Funds through the FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) as part of project UID/EEA/50014/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio