Project :: Inclusive Tangibles

Inclusive Tangibles

All children have the right to live a stimulating, fulfilling and autonomous life. This is a big challenge when considering children with autism particularly because the environment around them is not always designed to cater for their specific learning needs. Individuals with autism often struggle to engage in areas related to communication, socialization, and flexibility of thought and often have sensory processing issues that make harder to master functional skills. Through this PhD I'd like to explore how children with high support autism, aged between 4 to 10, can benefit from a range of novel technologies, in particular focusing on tangible and expressive computing models.

The overarching research question is to investigate the potential of accessible, multimodal and tangible interactions in leisure and recreational activities to: support the development of social skills such as eye-contact, proximity, and sharing; stimulate collaborative play and provide sensory regulation. It will be addressed by conducting some exploratory studies that make use of ethnographic approaches and user-centred design, and by testing some interactive tangible user interfaces or TUIs aimed at supporting a stimulating playful environment. However, a more pragmatic approach to generate a statistical analysis of qualitative data will also be used.

The project is developed in collaboration with the children of the Garden School, a state special school for girls and boys aged between 2 to 16 based in North East London.

My previous experience working with children on the autism spectrum, both in playgrounds and education, has shown that there is a lack of cross-disciplinary research in this filed. At the very least there is a lack of application of novel technologies in the wild. Generally, there is also a limited amount of research on tangible interactions focused on children with high support needs autism. Through this Ph.D. I’d like to fill this gap and to help some of the children to achieve an independent, social and pleasing life.

People

Antonella Nonnis
Nick Bryan-Kinns

Research Areas

Children
Autism
HCI
Child-Computer Interaction
Tangible Computing
User Experience
Interactive Art
Human-Centred Design

Links