An Alternative Design Perspective for Technology Supporting Youngsters with Autism (original) (raw)
Related papers
2006
On starting to think about interaction design for low-functioning persons in the autistic spectrum (PAS), especially children, one finds a number of questions that are difficult to answer: Can we typify the PAS user? Can we engage the user in interactive communication without generating frustrating or obsessive situations? What sort of visual stimuli can we provide? Will they prefer representational or abstract visual stimuli? Will they understand threedimensional (3D) graphic representation? What sort of interfaces will they accept? Can we set ambitious goals such as education or therapy? Unfortunately, most of these questions have no answer yet. Hence, we decided to set an apparently simple goal: to design a "fun application," with no intention to reach the level of education or therapy. The goal was to be attained by giving the users a sense of agency-by providing first a sense of control in the interaction dialogue. Our approach to visual stimuli design has been based on the use of geometric, abstract, two-dimensional (2D), real-time computer graphics in a full-body, non-invasive, interactive space. The results obtained within the European-funded project MultiSensory Environment Design for an Interface between Autistic and Typical Expressiveness (MEDI-ATE) have been extremely encouraging. INTERACTION DESIGN WITH VISUALS FOR PAS CHILDREN 223 FIG. 7. "Mo-ta-to" (final interaction model): User plays with silhouette and waves. A B
Collaborative Design for Young Children with Autism: Design Tools and a User Study
This paper provides an overview of a collaborative design effort that involves computer scientists, psychologists, and designers working together to investigate design methods to help in the creation of technology to people with cognitive disabilities. The focus of this effort was in developing techniques to help novice designers create technology interfaces to support anger management in young people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The primary output for designers is a card set for which each card has a claim about an anger management technique that can help young people. Design activities leveraging scenarios and personas are suggested that leverage the card set in the creation of technology interfaces. This paper introduces the card set and supporting techniques, describes a design session in an undergraduate classroom setting, and speculates about future directions for this work.
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.
Designing Tangible Tasks for Autism People: NADI
2020
People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have different sensory stimuli that cause difficulties managing the tasks they need to do to sustain their daily lives such as how to communicate, how to respond, and even how to dress or cook. These sensitivities become their characteristics for their whole life even if they take proper education in the early period of their childhood. That’s why it is essential to have an understanding of how people with ASD interpret the world and view people and objects around them. Tangible user interfaces may assist them to interpret the world by using physical forms of intangible knowledge since it helps them to capture the environment around them. For this reason, the interaction between the people with ASD and tangible user interfaces are examined based on the two foundational theories; Self-Determination Theory and Sensory Integration Theory, together with the TEACHH method. Then, user research was made firstly by conducting semi-structured qualit...
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2014
Since 1999, research for creativity triggering education solutions for interactive media design (IMD) undergraduate level education in Yıldız Technical University leaded to a variety of rule breaking exercises. Among many approaches, the method of designing for disabling environment, in which the students design for the users with one or more of their senses disabled, brought the challenge of working on developing interactive solutions for the individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASC). With the aim of making their life easier, the design students were urged to find innovative yet functional interaction solutions for this focused user group, whose communicational disability activate due to the deficiencies in their senses and/or cognition. Between 2011 and 2012, this project brief supported by participatory design method motivated 26 students highly to develop design works to reflect the perfect fit of interaction design to this challenging framework involving the defective social communication cases of autism.
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 technology for autism: an interdisciplinary approach
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 2011
In this article we argue for an interdisciplinary approach to designing interactive technology for young children on the Autistic Spectrum. We believe it key for the design process to embrace perspectives from diverse fields to arrive at a methodology, and consequently technology, that delivers satisfactory outcomes for all stakeholders involved. The ECHOES project has provided us with the opportunity to work on a technology-enhanced learning environment that supports acquisition and exploration of social skills by typically developing children and children with high-functioning autism and Asperger Syndrome. ECHOES' research methodology and the learning environment relies crucially on multidisciplinary expertise including developmental and clinical psychology, visual arts, human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, education and many other cognate disciplines. In this article, we reflect on the methods needed to develop a technology-enhanced learning environment for young users with Autism Spectrum Disorder. We identify key benefits, challenges and limitations of this approach. Although the context of ECHOES is very specific, we believe that there are a number of guidelines for the desing of technology-enhanced intervention for autism that can benefit a wider community of researchers in this emerging discipline.
CoDesign, 2007
People on the autistic spectrum are characterised as having difficulties with social and communicative functioning. They are understood to have unusual sensory experiences, in any modality, which means that their perception of the world is alarmingly different from non-autistic people. These experiences create confusion and anxiety, and for many autistic individuals their lives are dominated by fear.
Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, 2012
In this paper we discuss participatory approaches to designing interactive technologies for children with disabilities. While participatory design (PD) has been increasingly influential in the field of Human-Computer Interaction as a whole, applying its methods and theories to children with disabilities raises challenges specific to this target group and poses more fundamental questions about the limits of PD. We will first build the underlying argument of why we believe PD is particularly important when designing for children with disabilities, before discussing the challenges and opportunities that come with implementing PD in this context. We ground this discussion in our own experiences with developing a learning environment for children with autism spectrum conditions (ASC). We then consider future perspectives and develop research questions by reflecting on our experiences.