Cara Wilson

MyWord: Supporting the Interest-based Learning of Words through a Personal Visual Dictionary

In this research we explore how interest-based interactive technologies can support learning, particularly for children for whom receptive language and the pace of the general curriculum can be challenging. We designed and iteratively developed MyWord, a visual dictionary tablet app, which supports the exploration of words through images that represent a childs interest. The prototype was derived from a parents concept and a one-month deployment with her child. Early findings indicate that MyWord has the potential to support collaborative image curation, browsing and discovery of interests, and writing and spelling practices. This paper bridges knowledge between competency-based learning approaches and technology design. We conclude with reflections on early use of the MyWord app and pose questions to direct future work. \

Digital Strategies for Supporting Strengths- and Interests-based Learning with Children with Autism

Technologies to support children with autism tend to use predefined content to enhance specific skills, such as verbal communication or emotion recognition. Few mobilise the childs own (often very specific) interests, strengths and capabilities. Digital technologies offer opportunities for children to personalise learning with their own content, following their own interests and enabling their self-expression. This project sought to engage children to record and express their own interests within their contexts of support - the home and the classroom. The vehicle for self-expression was an audio-visual calendaring app called MeCalendar. Implementation was kept open-ended to allow teachers to use it in ways that best fit with their existing embedded practices. In this paper we report on how the prototype has been appropriated in two classrooms by teachers in an autism-specific school setting with children aged 6 to 7. Our contribution is an understanding of how technologies for self-expression led to enhanced verbal communication, positive reinforcement through video modelling, engagement in class tasks and enhanced social interaction. Children appropriated the design in unimagined ways, leading them to self-scaffold and to catalyse their confidence in social interaction and self-expression. Teachers played an integral role in appropriating the design in the classroom, specifically through their in-depth knowledge of each child and their individual needs, strengths and interests.

Giving a voice through design: adapting design methods to enhance the participation of people with communication difficulties

Many participatory design methods are heavily reliant on the presence of communication skills, with approaches often focusing on verbal or written outputs. For people with communication difficulties it can often be difficult to engage with such approaches. This workshop aims to bring together researchers, designers and practitioners to explore share both positive and challenging experiences of working with users with communication difficulties within participatory design. We will generate a description of a set of design methods which have been adapted and used with people communication difficulties, with a view to enhancing the knowledge and skills of workshop participants for the future.

MyWord: enhancing engagement, interaction and self-expression with minimally-verbal children on the autism spectrum through a personal audio-visual dictionary

Digital technologies to support children on the autism spectrum often offer predefined content for modelling, communicating and training. However, children may not relate to the content, and it may not match their own personal interests and motivations. This paper investigates the use of MyWord, an interest-based, child-led technology, as an exploratory probe. This audio-visual dictionary app supports a child to build their own personalised catalogue of favourite words, images and audio over time. We undertook a field study over two school terms in an autism-specific primary school with 12 minimally-verbal children aged 5 to 8 and their teachers and speech therapists. Findings indicate that creating dictionary entries involved processes of personal choice, representation of the self and interests, and dynamic action and play. Use of personally and contextually relevant words enhanced engagement, interaction and self-expression. We contribute a novel, flexible, interest-based technology, and reflections on its use in autism-specific school contexts. We highlight the importance of the childs lived experience and holistic child-led approaches to technology design.

Design participation lab

How would you describe your lab to visitors? At the Design Participation Lab, our projects have a humanitarian or environmental focus. We work with Indigenous communities, older people, children with autism, and people with intellectual disabilities, seeking to understand how they appropriate technologies and how we might co-design desirable technologies. We value pluralism, seeking to make technologies that reflect the rich diversity and idiosyncrasies of people and the ways in which they wish to interact. Recently we have extended our work to exploring interaction between people and nature. Working with ecologists, eco-acoustics researchers, communities, and government organizations, we aim toward new kinds of socio-enviro-technical systems that make it easier, more interesting, and more fun to monitor and understand species.

The Ambient Birdhouse: Bringing Birds Inside to Learn About Birds Outside

We demonstrate a technology to explore the problem of the disconnect between people and nature, the Ambient Birdhouse. Although people are surrounded by flora and fauna, nature is often hidden and difficult to learn about. Birds are active outside when many people are indoors, seen but not heard, or heard but not seen. So, can technologies play a role in reconnecting us to and through nature? This project researches how to learn about local birds in a non-intrusive, fun calm and engaging manner. The Ambient Birdhouse sits inside the house and plays media of local birds - sometimes giving clues about them. Bird houses are connected. You can share bird media from your phone of your own sightings, challenging a neighbour to identify them. Known calls are interspersed with environmental sound to foster listening and developing an ear for local birds. The Ambient Birdhouse follows principles of ambient interaction. It poses the design research challenge of how to engage people in a gentle, social way over time to build awareness of nature, bringing it back into our lives.

Towards thriving: extending computerised cognitive behavioural therapy

Positive Psychology suggests that every one of us has the potential to increase our psychological wellbeing, while Positive Computing endeavours to develop technologies to support wellbeing and human potential. One such technology, Computerised Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CCBT), has been found to be effective in increasing wellbeing for individuals with diagnosed mental health conditions. However, its ability to improve wellbeing in people without pre-existing mental health conditions is less well understood. To explore use in this population, an 8-week long user trial of a CCBT programme was conducted. Results provided insight into CCBTs ability to; increase subjective wellbeing; increase empathy for individuals who do experience mental health conditions; enhance self-reflection; increase positive behaviour change; and increase motivation to action. In lieu of perpetually creating new health technologies, we suggest a design approach which explores the extension and repurposing of existing evidence-based technologies to support and enhance the wellbeing of previously unintended populations. We found CCBT to be a tool which could contribute to the wellbeing of wider society from a preventative, proactive and positive perspective.