User Requirements for Accessible Digital Pretend Play Interventions for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Human Centered Design Approach

Pretend play is a stage in early childhood development where children learn and develop language and social skills through acting out imaginary scenarios. Pretend play skills are typically delayed for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Digital technology has been successfully used to engage children with ASD in pretend play, however research around the needs and requirements of the user is often omitted in these designs. Human Centered Design (HCD) provides a way of including these needs and making interventions suitably 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 (professionals 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 presented provide researchers with a tool for developing digital pretend play interventions 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.