A Controlled Experiment

Subject Pool

• "Novice" (pre-B.S.) and "expert" (B.S. plus work experience) subjects, divided randomly in 3 groups
  • hyperlinked library available without a search function
  • hyperlinked library with grep-like search function
  • index page and package interfaces and search function only; no hyperlinking
• Volunteer subjects taken from undergraduate courses at The George Washington University and the University of Scranton
  • GW students were observed during the experiment
  • Scranton students participated remotely over the Web
• Additional remote subjects were recruited via newsgroups and mailing lists

The Library in the Study

• Ada 95 package interfaces to the full Java system and GUI libraries
• Supplied by Intermetrics as part of AppletMagic Ada 95-to-J-code compiler
• Why did we choose this library?
  • GW undergraduates study Ada 95 as their first language
  • Complete, tested, industrial-strength library written in Ada 95 with heavy use of OO properties, especially type extension (inheritance) and polymorphism