Judith Good

Designing technology for children with special needs: bridging perspectives through participatory design

This article presents and discusses co-creation techniques for involving children in the design of a technologically enhanced learning environment. The ECHOES project, which involves both typically developing children and children with autism spectrum conditions, aims to create an environment that scaffolds the development of childrens social skills. The authors draw attention to the constraints and limitations of co-designing new technologies, which are by necessity interdisciplinary, and describe experiments with sensory interest and storytelling to bridge tensions between system design and the imaginary worlds of young children. Related work is reviewed, where children with special needs have been included in the design process, and a series of design activities implemented in ECHOES is described. Reflecting on these experiences, key themes are identified that may be of interest to practitioners and researchers who work with children in inclusive design contexts. These themes address the role of theory, the impact of technology, the support of creativity, the validity of inspiration and the design of non-digital generative tools to harness childrens imagination. The article also includes a discussion on the ethical implications of co-designing with children and describes how the project evolved as a consequence of the work described.

Story creation in virtual game worlds

Allowing young people to create computer games they will ultimately want to play not only offers key educational benefits but builds self-esteem and teamwork skills.

Developing technology for autism: an interdisciplinary approach

We present an interdisciplinary methodology for designing interactive multi-modal technology for young children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). In line with many other researchers in the field, we believe that the key to developing technology in this context is to embrace perspectives from diverse disciplines to arrive at a methodology that delivers satisfactory outcomes for all stakeholders. The ECHOES project provided us with the opportunity to develop a technology-enhanced learning (TEL) environment that facilitates acquisition and exploration of social skills by typically developing (TD) children and children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). ECHOES’ methodology and the learning environment rely crucially on multi-disciplinary expertise including developmental psychology, visual arts, human–computer interaction, artificial intelligence, education, and several other cognate disciplines. In this article, we reflect on the methods needed to develop a TEL environment for young users with ASDs by identifying key features, benefits, and challenges of this approach.

Children's narrative development through computer game authoring

Recent research into the educational applications of computer games has focused on the skills which children can develop while playing games. Various benefits of computer game playing have been recorded, such as increased motivation; development of problem solving and discussion skills; and improvement in aspects of story writing. While encouraging children to play appropriately designed computer games can be used to enhance their learning, enabling children to create their own computer games offers a further range of learning opportunities. This paper describes a workshop in which young people learned how to create their own computer role- play games for their friends and family to play. The purpose of the workshop was to give the young people an opportunity to tell stories in the medium of a computer game, and to develop narrative skills such as character creation, plot planning and interactive dialogue writing. Results from this study are used to illustrate the educational benefits of computer games authoring, and to suggest directions for future research in this area.

Learning to Think and Communicate with Diagrams: 14 Questions to Consider

This paper looks at the particular role which diagrammatic representations, and external representations more generally, play within an educational context. In particular, it considers the way in which the demands on diagrammatic representational systems in educational settings differ with respect to other settings (e.g. professional): in some instances, these demands are increased, while in others, the demands are markedly different.The paper considers three key issues: the question of whether diagrams make certain tasks easier (and whether this is desirable from an educational point of view), the generalisation and transfer of diagrammatic skills once learnt, and the possible problems associated with simultaneously learning domain knowledge and a novel representational system.The paper then considers a number of sub-issues, and concludes by highlighting areas of particular interest for future AI research.

Supporting the design contributions of children with autism spectrum conditions

In this paper we describe the development of a tool to support the contributions of children with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) in a design critique activity. The work is part of the ECHOES project in which we have included children with ASC in a participatory design process to create a technologically enhanced learning environment. We first discuss the general difficulties of involving children with ASC in participatory design work, particularly a socially demanding activity such as design critique. Based on theory from autism research and the results from our own previous design work, we then lay out requirements for a tool to allow children with ASC to become meaningfully involved in a design critique of the ECHOES environment. Subsequently, we describe a prototype of an annotation tool based on these requirements, a pilot study, and feedback elicited from special education teachers. We then report on a study in which seven children with ASC were involved in critiquing a prototype of the ECHOES system using the annotator. In our analysis of the childrens annotator use, we found that it served the intended purposes as a visual support, but also that it was appropriated for other means, such as emotional self-regulation. We discuss examples of these different uses and close by asking how these findings could be applied in other contexts where tools are required to facilitate a discourse in design, rather than directly capture its output.

Children's Narrative Development through Computer Game Authoring.

ConclusionsThe strong motivational influence of computer games on children can be used positively within education. This paper looks beyond the educational benefits which children can gain asconsumers of computer games to explore the additional benefits which could be gleaned from enabling children toproduce their own computer games. In the domain of literacy and narrative development, creating an interactive audio-visual computer game to tell a story has many potential benefits. The Game Maker workshop described in the paper confirms that creating stories within computer games is a task which young people find highly enjoyable, engaging and rewarding. Additionally, the workshop experience suggests that sophisticated game design is well within reach of 12–15 year olds. These motivational advantages indicate that it is well worth exploring how computer game authoring can be used in the classroom to raise both literacy standards and children’s enjoyment of story making activities

Interpreting input from children: a designerly approach

Involving children in the design process of interactive technology can greatly enhance its likelihood of successful adoption. However, childrens input and ideas require careful interpretation to reach viable designs and technical specifications, which poses a significant challenge to an adult design research team. In this paper we discuss our approach to managing the complexity of combining concepts and ideas that were generated through participatory design work with the practical, technical, ethical and theoretical constraints of developing a technologically enhanced learning environment for children with and without Autism Spectrum Conditions. We found that the nature of this design problem did not lend itself to be rationally reduced to produce a single solution, but required an understanding of interpretive and speculative approaches for us to be able to cope with the complexity of requirements. We describe a workshop in which members of the design team used such approaches to develop a design brief that is faithful to the childrens input. By making this process transparent, we aim to contribute to the methodology of using such designerly approaches in combination with participatory and human-centred methods to develop interactive technology.

Challenges, opportunities and future perspectives in including children with disabilities in the design of interactive technology

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.

Enhancing interactional synchrony with an ambient display

Nonverbal communication is an essential part of face-to-face social interaction, conveying information about emotion and interpersonal relationships. The rigorous sensing capabilities of pervasive technologies and the subtle nature of ambient technologies make them ideal to support the production of nonverbal communication in social interactions. In this paper we present a study using an ambient technology that supports nonverbal communication, and specifically nonverbal behaviours associated with rapport. We show that an ambient display can influence a participants nonverbal behaviour, and that participants are not aware of this change in their behaviour. We discuss these findings in terms of the design and ethical issues that it raises, and define an agenda for future work.