User Requirements for Accessible Digital Pretend Play Interventions for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, a Human Centred Design Approach

Louisa Bremner, Duke Gledhill, Jo Jolliffe Wood

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Pretend play is a stage in early childhood development where children learn and develop language and social skills through acting out imaginary sce-narios. Pretend play skills are typically delayed for children with Autism Spec-trum Disorders (ASD). Digital technology has been successfully used to engage children with ASD in pretend play, however research around the needs and re-quirements of the user is often omitted in these designs. Human Centered Design (HCD) provides a way of including these needs and making interventions suita-bly accessible to the target user. This paper presents the results of a multi-stage HCD process including observations, interviews and a Delphi study, using both the primary group (children with ASD) and their proxies (those who work closely with the group). The final result is a set of User Requirements which emerged from the data in the HCD stages. The User Requirements and guidelines pre-sented provide researchers with a tool for developing digital pretend play inter-ventions for children with ASD. Future research could benefit by incorporating the User Requirements when designing digital pretend play interventions, which is a small but growing area of research.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 25th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
PublisherSpringer, Cham
Publication statusAccepted/In press - 10 Feb 2023
Event25th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction - AC Bella Sky Hotel and Bella Center, Copenhagen, Denmark
Duration: 23 Jul 202328 Jul 2023
Conference number: 25
https://2023.hci.international/index.html

Conference

Conference25th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
Abbreviated titleHCII 2023
Country/TerritoryDenmark
CityCopenhagen
Period23/07/2328/07/23
Internet address

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