ASD Module: a software to support the personal autonomy in the daily life of children with autism spectrum disorder (original) (raw)
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Guidelines for research and design of software for children with ASD in e-health
Universal Access in the Information Society
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neuro-developmental disorder that results in narrow interest and impairments in communication and social relationships. Usually, unknown contexts generate anxiety and frustration in persons with ASD, and great impediment in accessing services, including health ones. This seriously compromises prevention and treatment interventions in different medical areas. Technology offers many opportunities for persons with ASD and can be used to act as a mediator, helping to manage communication and interpersonal relationships and to familiarize with the environment, especially in new contexts. Specifically, we used digital tools to reduce stress and anxiety while teaching adequate dental care to children with ASD (MyDentist project). To generalize the R&D approach, we followed in the context of the MyDentist project for its adoption for research and development of inclusive software in e-health. We analyze our design and development process using the three-c...
“Tell Your Day”: Developing Multimodal Interaction Applications for Children with ASD
Universal Access in Human–Computer Interaction. Design and Development Approaches and Methods, 2017
The development of applications for children, and particularly for those diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), is a challenging task. In this context, careful consideration of the characteristics of these users, along with those of different stakeholders, such as parents and teachers, is essential. Also, it is important to provide different ways of using applications through multimodal interaction, in order to adapt, as much as possible, to the users' needs, capabilities and preferences. Providing multimodality does not mean that users will interact multimodally, but provides freedom of choice to the user. Additionally, enabling multiple forms of interaction might also help understanding what actually works better, for an audience that is not always able to express an opinion regarding what might work. In this article, we take on previous work regarding the definition of a Persona for a child diagnosed with ASD and, considering the goals above, propose and evaluate a first prototype of an application targeting the audience represented by this Persona. This application, aims to serve as a place for communication and information exchange among the child, her family, and teachers and supports multimodal interaction.
Thea: empowering the therapeutic alliance of children with ASD by multimedia interaction
Multimedia Tools and Applications
The Therapeutic Alliance (TA) between patient and health provider (therapist or clinician) is one of the most relevant factors for the success of a therapy. In the case of people suffering from Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), the alliance is extended to all the people involved in their care (i.e., teachers, therapists, clinicians, relatives). In this paper, we propose a multimedia application named Thea for empowering the TA of children with ASD by improving the communication among the TA members, sharing guidelines, multimedia contents, and strategies to comply with challenging behaviors and progress with particular attention towards end-users who are occasional smart-users. A detailed process for empowering the TA members by enhancing the informed interaction among all of them is proposed and implemented. A vocal assistant also supports patients/caregivers and therapists in documenting their activity with the person with ASD by recording videos in a free-hand modality. After a con...
An Alternative Design Perspective for Technology Supporting Youngsters with Autism
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2014
People with autism present several disabilities in communication, social interaction and behavioral fields. There is a wide variation among these individuals and it is essential to develop therapies and materials customized for them. There are many design approaches in Human-Computer Interaction, but most of them present some limitations for designing to this audience. We conducted a study using paper prototyping with children with autism in order to contribute to the design of software for them. In this paper, we report some limitations in using this technique and the need for customizing applications for the individual who will use them. Reflecting on these needs and analyzing approaches to interface design, we present and discuss a proposal for a design methodology that combines Meta-design and Semiotic Engineering.
Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) typically face challenges in communication and social interaction, with restricted sensory abilities and repetitive behaviour. Approximately 1 in every 110 Australian children is diagnosed with ASD. The provision to support children with ASD is challenged by their unique characteristics and complexities. Further, many countries have poorly structured guidelines for support or use of intervention services that are not integrated, and there is a shortage of educational and healthcare professionals to sustain interventions for children with ASD. Technology-based interventions hold great promise for better support and service of children with ASD; they can profile abilities, encourage and track development, and potentially enable better individualised interventions to support each child. This research explored how to support communication between home and school for children with ASD who have limited verbal skills, by designing, implementing and evaluating an iPad application. The iPad application called MyCalendar allowed students and their families and teachers to record photos and videos of activities both at home and at school, presenting them in a calendar format, to support sharing between the settings of home and school. MyCalendar was evaluated with four teachers, ten parents and eleven children aged between five and seven years old over six months. The children were in years preparatory to Year 2 of the Special Education Unit of an Australian State School catering for children with ASD. We found that MyCalendar was successfully used by parents and teachers to better understand both a child's behaviour and the activities in which they engaged across settings. MyCalendar was also found to stimulate excitement and interest in video and photo sharing, and was used as a tool to model both behaviour and language. The significant contributions to knowledge are: 1. A new mobile technology based application (MyCalendar) to support communication between home and school. 2. Short and long term evaluations of use of the application. v 3. Methods of engaging children with ASD that focus around their own motivations, activities and interests and therefore support development of each individual child. 4. A new method of supporting language, behaviour modelling and modelling of writing for non-verbal children with ASD. Most importantly, the significance of this research is to present a new collaborative model of parent-child-teacher interactions using a technology-based intervention to support children with ASD between home and school. vi
This paper describes a framework, devised for rapid application development, and rapid application customization of standalone multimedia and rich content software, targeted at students with special needs. We present a proof-of-concept software application for promotion and training of social communication skills in children with autism spectrum disorders. Web technologies and related standards are used as a way of easily involving tutors, professionals in the field, and end users themselves in the software development and customization process with minimal training and support.
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.
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.
A Proposed ASD-Centric Framework: The Case of ASDAPT
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2013
As the number of individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) rises, the need for providing one-to-one treatment increases significantly. ASD is a complex lifelong disorder that has an intense impact on a person's development predominantly demonstrating strong deficiencies in many types of social behavior, social imagination and communication. Although people with autism share some common characteristics, no two individuals are the same. In this regards, computer-based treatment approaches should always be emphasizing on the abilities, individualistic characteristics and preferences of a person with ASD. In this paper, we propose an ASD-centric adaptation and personalization framework, namely ASDAPT, that utilizes an extended user profile which attempts to capture inclusively the attributes that could formulate a strong basis for the apt identification of an individual with ASD. Main aim of ASDAPT is to provide a unified adaptive approach to the learning process over a computer-based environment for children with ASD, discussing implementation considerations, taking place during the dynamic adaptation process, supported by a real life case scenario.