Assessing the Usability of Two Declarative Programming Languages to Model Geometric Events

Abstract

When space missions plan scientific actions for robotic spacecraft to execute, they frequently do so within a geometric context called an opportunity. Although there are geometric software libraries that let users write code to search for opportunities, they require knowledge of algorithms and imperative programming languages, which is a condition that might exclude a potentially large population of scientists. Additionally, there might be more user-friendly software systems for scientists to model and search for opportunities, but those might exclude other missions due to export concerns or an inability to maintain such software due to lack of staff or funding. To address these concerns, we designed two different computer languages to model opportunities. In this paper, we present these two languages, our study to evaluate their relative readability and usability, and results obtained in our research along with an interpretation of the same. The metric for this study has been a questionnaire with active exercises, statements with corresponding responses on a Likert scale, and open-ended questions to elicit qualitative responses. The study’s quantitative results provide us with relative and absolute quantification of the usability and readability of each language, while the study’s qualitative results help us direct future language design decisions.