Development of a Mobile App to Improve Numeracy Skills of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Participatory Design and Usability Study (original) (raw)
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Developing User Interface Design Application for Children with Autism
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2016
The usage of touchscreen-assistive technology in the 21 st century seems very promising. There has been a rapid rise in interest regarding the use of touchscreen assistive technology as an intervention and interdisciplinary research field for children with autism. Inventing and designing a touchscreen-assistive application for children with autism is a delicate process as designing technologies for groups of individual with profiles other than one's own is always challenging where the life worlds and lived experience are far removed from the experience of typical individual. Participatory design process that has been conducted with children with autism earlier in the study has led towards the invention of touchscreen-assistive learning numeracy apps (TaLNA). The application is focusing on basic numeracy and calculation to support teaching and learning. User interface design has been used as a baseline in establishing the TaLNA apps. It is a complement from the traditional approaches such as call cards and cue cards which being applied at the touchscreen devices. The TaLNA apps is believe assist parents, teachers, and instructors to train and educate the children with autism while growing their engagement and interest in learning. It is a hope with the establishment of this application, they will be able to learn, memorize and recognize the numbers through the animated and interactive learning application. Thus, this research paper discusses the user interface design process of forming TaLNA in assisting the teaching of basic calculations to children with autism.
TaLNA App: An Interactive Numeracy Mobile Learning Application for Children with Autism
International journal of interactive mobile technologies, 2023
In light of the COVID-19 pandemic's disruptions to education, there is a growing need for alternative learning methods, particularly for children with autism who thrive on routine and familiarity. This study aims to enhance numeracy learning for children with autism by using the touchscreen-assistive learning numeracy application (TaLNA) during the post-pandemic period, aligning with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 (quality education). Our primary focus is to leverage mobile learning through the TaLNA application to provide specialized educational content and remote progress monitoring. Combining mobile learning with SDG 4 principles ensures continuous access to education, promoting inclusivity and equity, even in challenging circumstances. Mobile learning offers personalized numeracy experiences tailored to individual needs, maintaining educational consistency and structure amidst disrupted routines and environments. This research has significant implications for instructors, teachers, and parents of children with autism, providing valuable insights for their pedagogical approaches.
Developing an educational app for students with autism
Frontiers in Education
This paper describes the design, development, and pilot test of an App, and explains how research based strategies and pedagogical approaches can be embedded within an App based format. The aims and scope of the research were to; (a) synthesize research findings on reading comprehension difficulties for students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) identifying evidence-based strategies that underpin improvements; (b) determine the features associated with the design of ‘quality’ educational apps; (c) create a reading comprehension app for students with ASD and; (d) test in applied settings. The study utilized extensive literature searches to determine key considerations for design and development of the App and then piloted the completed product through employing an AB case study design with two participants. Pre and post testing measured discrete vocabulary skills including expressive and receptive vocabulary, reading comprehension, phonological development, and reading behaviors. T...
Usability issues for smartphone users with special needs — Autism
2013 International Conference on Open Source Systems and Technologies, 2013
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a cognitive disorder caused due to abnormal functioning of brain impacting development activities. Over the time different techniques and methods have been in practice to teach and communicate with people suffering from ASD. With the rapid advancement in the field of smart phone technology researchers have come up with creative ideas to aid others. Usability of smart phone applications for disabled people gains great attention of modern researchers. This paper focuses on the usability issues of smart phone applications designed for people suffering from ASD. Comparative analysis of android and iPhone applications for autism has been presented in the paper. Usability of these applications is analyzed on the basis of a survey conducted on the ASD patients. Results gathered after survey highlight the usability issues with the apps available in the market. We present an abstract app design to overcome usability issues.
The usage of touchscreen-assistive technology in the 21 st century seems very promising. There has been a rapid rise in interest regarding the use of touchscreen assistive technology as an intervention and interdisciplinary research field for children with autism. Inventing and designing a touchscreen-assistive application for children with autism is a delicate process as designing technologies for groups of individual with profiles other than one's own is always challenging where the life worlds and lived experience are far removed from the experience of typical individual. Participatory design process that has been conducted with children with autism earlier in the study has led towards the invention of touchscreen-assistive learning numeracy apps (TaLNA). The application is focusing on basic numeracy and calculation to support teaching and learning. User interface design has been used as a baseline in establishing the TaLNA apps. It is a complement from the traditional approaches such as call cards and cue cards which being applied at the touchscreen devices. The TaLNA apps is believe assist parents, teachers, and instructors to train and educate the children with autism while growing their engagement and interest in learning. It is a hope with the establishment of this application, they will be able to learn, memorize and recognize the numbers through the animated and interactive learning application. Thus, this research paper discusses the user interface design process of forming TaLNA in assisting the teaching of basic calculations to children with autism.
Building Applications that Matter: Co-designing with Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2018
Technology-based applications for people with special needs are on the rise as mobile devices and wearable technology become more pervasive in society. However, the development of applications for special needs can be an intricate process due to the physical or mental challenges of the prospective users. Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) process the world differently and often encounter poor User Experience (UX) with applications that are not designed with them in mind. Application design approaches should be inclusive and partner with users and communities to increase application acceptance, improve useable features and create enjoyable interfaces; yet this is not current software design practice. A pilot study was conducted to investigate how adolescents with ASD use technology and explore how they could participate as co-designers in the early phases of application development. Two codesign workshops were conducted with six adolescents with ASD over one month where they engaged in the application ideation and design phases of a software design process through the use of group discussion and drawings. This paper presents the results of the pilot study and discusses the role of ASD participants in co-designing software applications for wearable technology and how they felt about their involvement in the process. Key themes were identified by thematic analysis of the data collected. Preliminary data suggest that participants: (1) are technology savvy users; (2) experience poor UX due to their unique perceptive; and (3) expect to make design decisions for applications built for them.
Usability Evaluation and User Acceptance of Mobile Applications for Saudi Autistic Children
International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies (iJIM), 2021
The evolution of mobile technologies in learning, has been increased the requirements for developing appropriate usability model to fall into the same line with mobile learning applications. Usability of mobile learning applications is a topic that is into research, this paper focuses a tailored designed model called (M-UTUAT) mobile usability model that combines People at the Centre of Mobile Application Development (PACMAD) and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) to form a more robust model. As an addition to the usability research, an application (ICT) was developed for children with speech delays and children diagnosed with autism spectrum. The application is a mobile/tablet-based application that developed according to mobile usability measures to get the maximum learning skills and abilities to help autistic children. It has been designed according to the needs of the children specific to their category and skills. The autism spectrum is a broad spec...
A MOBILE EDUCATIONAL APPLICATION FOR CHILDREN WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER
A MOBILE EDUCATIONAL APPLICATION FOR CHILDREN WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER, 2015
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental syndrome that is defined by unusual, restricted, and repetitive behaviors along with deficit in social reciprocity and communications . There isn’t any widely accepted treatment for ASD’s. In spite of great improvements in early diagnosis and interventions, most children diagnosed with ASD are unlikely to live independently upon reaching adulthood. As the number of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) continues to grow in our country, we are reminded of the needs of this community. Language skills of children with ASD may vary on a wide spectrum. Some children may have difficulty developing language skills and following a conversation. While some children with ASD may be unable to speak, others may have rich vocabularies and be able to talk about specific subjects in great detail. Their communication skills vary depending upon their social and intellectual development. In order to support their development, teaching reading to them is crucially important. Literacy programs which are based on visual learning style of children with ASD show more steady progress at their reading comprehension. Following a rigorous and comprehensive research conducted on academic literature and software market, we conclude that there is lack of mobile educational applications designed to teach reading and writing in Turkish specifically to children with ASD. Our research objective is to develop mobile educational application software to teach reading and writing in Turkish to children with ASD. With regard to their visual learning style, Patricia Oelwein’s method (1995) is implemented to strengthen their comprehension through the stages of recognition, matching, selecting and naming.( Broun, 2004). We use tablets and smart phones as our application’s environment as children with ASD show interest in experiencing them. There is also evidence that touch screens are easier to use for some children with ASD because they may have difficulties of using different physical devices such as screen, mouse and/or keyboard in coordination.
Co-designing Tablet Computer Applications with Sri Lankan Practitioners to Support Children with ASD
IDC '18 Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children, 2018
Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often have impairments in social interactions with peers. Digital technology, in the form of computerized applications, can be used as a remedy for this, even though there is a paucity of such applications in low-resource regions like Sri Lanka. Therefore, we conducted co-design workshops to develop tablet applications to improve social interactions of children with ASD in Sri Lanka. 18 experienced practitioners who work closely with children with ASD in Sri Lanka participated in the workshops and co-designed two prototypes called Picture to Object Matching Application (POMA) and Word to Picture Matching Application (WPMA). We present the design process along with the insights gained from the workshops, which we believe are valuable for designing software applications for children with ASD in Sri Lanka.