Extended participatory design approach to develop learning game for children with autism to address multi cue responding / Sara Reisi Dehkordi

Game-based learning is about adopting certain gaming principles and applying those principles to real life settings, so as to engage users. In this approach, learning goals and users' contribution were involved, in order to engage the users with learning materials. One of the effective methods to design a game-based learning is through users' contributions. However, the current studies in game-based learning are lacking in applying users' contributions, especially, when it comes to users with special needs to address the stimuli that can engage the user in the multi cue responding game. Another important problem is that usually user's contribution methods are based on the unbalanced design activities. When it comes to learning approach for children with ASD there is a need to extend one of the available methods based on their daily routine activities. The aim of this research is to devise a means to design a game-based learning, by extending the Bluebell method in Participatory Design (PD) approach to develop an application game for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). As the first step of problem identification, two preliminary studies were conducted to identify the factors that affect the engagement rate in children with ASD and get a better understanding of the main challenges with participants. Results of the preliminary studies were used to propose the design to identify social and non-social stimulus related to High Autism Interest (HAI) and Low Autism Interest (LAI) for the participants. The design approach was started by involving all the 15 participants from KhaneyeMehreAutism in Tehran, Iran. The participants were involved in design activities in order to facilitate the extended design process and understanding between the HAI and LAI. By comparing the result of participatory design, the stimuli were categorized and combined with traditional learning methods, as a learning purpose, and developed on touch screen devices to address multi cues response. After the final product called T-PART was designed and developed, it was well astoundingly embraced by the psychologists. Next was the evaluation phase, the reaction evaluations were in two categories, engagement and learning improvement evaluation were conducted.