Design guidelines for more engaging electronic books: insights from a cooperative inquiry study

This paper presents the results of a cooperative inquiry study aimed at developing a prototype of enhanced eBook for leisure reading. Together with a group of 9 to 11 years old children we explored various design ideas and, starting from these ideas, we developed the eBook prototype and elaborated a shortlist of recommendations. The paper aims to extend the research on the design of children's eBooks with a set of six guidelines that are intended to help designers in creating better and more engaging eBooks

Interactive sonification to assist children with autism during motor therapeutic interventions

Interactive sonification is an effective tool used to guide individuals when practicing movements. Little research has shown the use of interactive sonification in supporting motor therapeutic interventions for children with autism who exhibit motor impairments. The goal of this research is to study if children with autism understand the use of interactive sonification during motor therapeutic interventions, its potential impact of interactive sonification in the development of motor skills in children with autism, and the feasibility of using it in specialized schools for children with autism. We conducted two deployment studies in Mexico using Go-with-the-Flow, a framework to sonify movements previously developed for chronic pain rehabilitation. In the first study, six children with autism were asked to perform the forward reach and lateral upper-limb exercises while listening to three different sound structures (i.e., one discrete and two continuous sounds). Results showed that children with autism exhibit awareness about the sonification of their movements and engage with the sonification. We then adapted the sonifications based on the results of the first study, for motor therapy of children with autism. In the next study, nine children with autism were asked to perform upper-limb lateral, cross-lateral, and push movements while listening to five different sound structures (i.e., three discrete and two continues) designed to sonify the movements. Results showed that discrete sound structures engage the children in the performance of upper-limb movements and increase their ability to perform the movements correctly. We finally propose design considerations that could guide the design of projects related to interactive sonification

Co-design of augmented reality textbook for children’s collaborative learning experience in primary schools

Augmented Reality (AR) is a recent technology that allows a seamless composition between virtual objects and the real world. This practice-based research uses the affordances of AR to design an AR textbook for collaborative learning experience. It identifies the key concepts of children s AR textbooks for the designing and evaluation of collaborative learning experiences. These concepts were used to develop a conceptual framework for the AR textbook that considers collaborative experience, learning and usability. Informed by these concepts, the research also has identified the design features which are unique to AR affordances which can be integrated in the school textbooks to develop a collaborative AR textbook for primary school children. The research follows a participatory design approach to involve the users of the AR textbook in the design process. The researcher has conducted three co-design studies involving primary school children and adults using cooperative inquiry techniques. The first study uses low-tech prototyping to find the overall direction of designing the AR textbook. After the development of the first AR textbook prototype, two formative evaluations have been conducted using cooperative inquiry critiquing, and layered elaboration techniques. Throughout these studies, a conceptual framework has been developed namely, Experience, Learn and Use (ELU) for the designing and evaluation of children s AR textbooks for collaborative learning experience. This framework is based on the adaption of Janet Read s Play, Learn, Use (PLU) model that defines children s relationships with the interactive technologies. The research proposes the ELU framework as a useful classification framework in the evaluation process, which informs the design features of the AR textbook which are related to the concepts of collaborative experience, learning and usability. The practical component of the thesis proposes a sample of an AR textbook that is integrated in the regular school curriculum. It demonstrates the design features which can be implemented in other textbooks to support collaborative learning experiences for primary school children. The documentation of the co-design process provides a practical framework for co-designing an AR textbook with children, as well as an evidence of using the ELU framework in practice. 4 This research also contributes in bridging the gap between AR and Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) communities, through the use of common CCI methods in the AR development. This research has resulted in key design principles which contribute original knowledge to the literature of the AR for children s education considering the CCI perspective. These important principles are informed by the collaborative experiences, learning and usability aspects that establish a framework for the design and evaluation of collaborative AR textbook for children. The eight identified principles by this research are, Joint Textbooks, Personalised AR Experience, Interactive AR Book, Communication-Based Learning, Rewarding AR feedback, Audio AR Textbook, Intuitive AR Markers, and Mutual AR Display. The research introduces the definition for each of the concepts and a demonstration of the related design features in the outcome of the AR textbook prototype

HEBE: Highly Engaging eBook Experiences

Despite more and more books are made available in electronic format and technology is increasingly present in children’s everyday life, thus far the potential of the electronic book (eBook) medium has been only partially exploited. With the Highly Engaging eBook Experiences (HEBE) project we studied how to design and evaluate eBooks for children with the goal of making the reading experience more engaging. The project began with an investigation of the many facets that characterize the reading experience of children in order to understand how it could possibly be enhanced by electronic books. In a later stage an intergenerational design team used different techniques of Cooperative Inquiry to explore a range of design ideas. Then, based on those ideas, we developed a prototype of enhanced eBook and elaborated a shortlist of design recommendations that are intended to help designers in creating more engaging eBooks. The research project ended with a stage of evaluation where children’s User Experience with the eBook prototype was assessed. We took inspiration from Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow theory to define a benchmark for evaluating the reading experience. Then, by means of the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), we investigated and collected data on the reading experience of two groups of children, one of which read an eBook enhanced following our design recommendations while the other read a basic version of the same eBook. Following a mixed-method approach, with quantitative analysis we verified whether participants who read the enhanced eBook had a better reading experience, while with qualitative analysis we tried to understand why. The results of the evaluation showed that that an eBook designed following our design recommendations may have a positive effect on children’s reading experience by making it more engaging