Learning Through Exploration: How Children, Adults, and Older Adults Interact with a New Feature-Rich Application

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Feature-rich applications such as word processors and spreadsheets are not only being used by adults but increasingly by children and older adults as well. Learning these applications is challenging as they offer hundreds of commands throughout the interface. We investigate how newcomers from different age groups explore the user interface of a feature-rich application to determine, locate, and use relevant features. We conducted an in-lab observational study with 10 children (10-12), 10 adults (20-35) and 10 older adults (60-75) who were first-time users of Microsoft OneNote. Our results illustrate key exploration differences across age groups, including that children were careful and performed as efficiently as the adults, whereas older adults spent a longer time and repeated sequences of failed selections. Further, their exploration style was negatively influenced by their past knowledge of similar applications. We discuss design interventions to accommodate these exploration differences and to improve software onboarding for newcomers.