Introduction
A research study was conducted to make daily life communication easy for children suffering from Autism with the help of some kind of assistive system.
This research study was done as a part of a course project at Uppsala university in a group setting where all of the members are part of the Master's Programme in Human-Computer Interaction.
In this research study, we mostly focused on understanding the user's, their needs and their behaviour, so that our work can be utilized by other researchers and Designers,
in addition to that, we aim to provide a starting point for further research.
Context
Social incompetence and verbal communication difficulties are common in children
with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (The Neurotypical, 2011). Autism is a broad
range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive
behaviours, speech, and non-verbal communication (Autism Speaks, 2020).
Verbal communication in particular has been identified as a major hurdle
for them in social interactions. Around 25% of autistic children speak very few
or no words, which makes it difficult for them to interact and convey their needs to
others (Kasari et al. 2013)
Our research question is as follows:
How can we help autistic children with impaired verbal communication skills to communicate effectively and efficiently with an assistive system?
Process
Literature Review
Literature Review of the scholarly articles was conducted to get a better understanding of the problem and user behaviour. We begin to study relevant research studies about autism and how it affects the users and problems they face in communication and how they communicate.
Data Gathering: Interviews and questionnaires
Interviews and questionnaires were conducted to help us understand the communication and interaction skills of the children in question, as well as get an insight on their daily lives to understand their communication and social skill struggles.
Sample
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2 participants interviewed
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16 participants participated in questionnaire
Data Gathering: Video Observation
In order to understand user behaviour, video observation was done on some popular
videos of children suffering from Autism. A total of eight videos were observed, and all the kids were from age 3 to 16.
Requirements Elicitation
PACT ANALYSIS
After gathering data we performed PACT analysis to specify the requirements and goals we aspire for our users to achieve when using our product.
MOSCOW RULES
After specifying the requirements we used MosCow rules to prioritize our requirements in four categories (Must have, Should Have, Could Have and Want to have).
Ideation
Different ideation techniques like brainstorming and the 6-3-5 method were used
when choosing what to design and each idea was discussed and evaluated. During this
process, all the requirements were discussed, where the main focus was to pick an
idea that would keep the interface and purpose simple.
Prototyping
Low fidelity Prototype And Evaluation
After specifying and prioritizing the requirements we decided to create a low fidelity prototype for only the main feature of our system which is a communication board and evaluated the prototype and key issues were noted.
Mid Fidelity Prototype And Evaluation
After evaluating the low Fi prototype, we decided to build a mid fi prototype to address all issues noted by evaluating the low fi prototype and to prototype other features of the app/system.
Key Findings
Below are some key findings from interviews questionnaires and video observations about our users and problems they face and also their strengths and weaknesses. All of these findings were helpful in making design decisions.
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Struggle following conversations and lose interest very quickly.
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Tend to focus better when the subject of the conversation is about something that interests them.
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Environment and context may have an impact on how good they communicate and
interact. -
To get them to communicate better is to be as straightforward, clear, and patient as possible.
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Kids with ASD are generally great with computers.
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Loud volume, bright lights, and noisy places made some of the kids angry and uncomfortable.
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Kids with ASD learn words very quickly when taught in context with great examples.
Design
Based on our findings, we designed a basic mid-fidelity prototype that can be a good starting point to demonstrate how the actual product should look and what features it must contain to fulfil user needs.
Basic Communication Board
Basic Communication Board is designed for children with age-group who communicate using a single word without forming proper sentences.
The Board contains some of the most widely used words through which children can communicate their basic needs.
Words are chosen based on some of the existing research on widely used words and also our collected data suggest that children with autism mostly only communicate when they want to express their needs; However further research is required for choosing the most appropriate words for effective communication.
One of the challenges was to fit many words on a small board, and as a result, we added themed category folders on the right-hand side of the screen where the users can pick the words from the category that suits their situation.
Users can further combine two words in the input field by dragging/Long press on the word and the play button can then be clicked to play the phrase.
Words and pictures can be customized, for further details on the customization feature please see the complete project report.
Advance Communication Board
Advanced communication board is designed for users who are able to form proper sentences. The board contains some of the widely used words for daily life communication needed to express needs and emotions.
Words are divided into multiple sections (pronouns, verbs, adjectives etc.) with different colour so that users can build a logical map in their mind about where the words are after some time of use.
At the bottom, we added a menu bar we called it context bar so if the user is in the Hotel switching to hotel context will replace the words on the communication board needed to communicate while in a hotel.
At the right side of the figure above, we added different folders containing more words related to each category for example if they want to communicate about quantities, different scale values, emotions etc.
Evaluation
After completing the prototype, we sent the design to some of the questionnaire
and interview participants. The testing session was conducted with three users and
each user was briefly introduced to the system.
The following are a few of the most common comments the interviewees made for the design:
● Difficult to find the relevant words on the communication board.
● Visuals seem to be distracting as the images on the communication board are very colourful and some images do not exactly match the words.
● System was easy to learn and navigate.
Conclusion
In this research study, we discussed and evaluated the design of an app with a visual-based communication board called Speak Freely‟, to help ASD kids with their
communication struggles.
We gathered data from mainly observing ASD kids on online platforms, and interviewed participants from a group of teachers and parents. Although the participants shared valuable information, getting additional professional help from doctors, therapists, and language experts would be optimal for possible future work of improving the app.
A special project like this requires time and research; hence due to both lack of time and the sensitivity and importance of the topic, we are aware that this project is not doing the topic enough justice.
On the other hand, the results from the participants trying out the Mid-fi prototype indicates that our design idea is not perfect but a promising first step.
In conclusion, we believe that with more research, “Speak Freely‟ has a great potential to help our targeted group develop their communication and interaction skills one day.