Somability: movement, independence and social engagement for adults with complex needs

This paper will report on Somability, a project developed with a day centre for adults with complex disabilities. Objective: Somability uses camera and projection technologies to translate full body movement into graphical outputs. The overarching objective is to make movement irresistible by rewarding the most tentative of actions with bold, playful and dynamic effects. Working within adult services posed many challenges - staff lacked confidence with technology, and had limited scope for meaningful recreational experiences due to time pressure and the constraints of physical space. Thus, our goal was to create a playful experience that could enhance the well-being of service users and their carers, whilst at the same time improve access to technologies. Methods: We adopted a research through design methodology, collaborating on generating concepts that amplified ordinary actions, making them the source of highly visceral creative exchanges between peers and carers. A process of iterative prototyping led to a focus on three core movements: reach, balance and flow, and a customisable interface that offered video mirroring, as well as options to extrapolate extraneous detail so that only traces of movement exist. Results: Staff at the centre conducted regular evaluations of Somability using a framework that measured the independence of service users. Results revealed that even those with poor self-awareness and limited movement were able to interact independently. Dramatic increases in dynamic movement were also reported. Carers expressed that they also felt creative, to the extent that the service participated in two public performances of the Somability project. Conclusion: Reduced funding for the arts, together with limitations on time and space mean that opportunities to enjoy creative movement are minimal within day services. The impact of a sedentary lifestyle is well understood, yet for some people the idea of an exercise regime is onerous. Our approach was to make simple movements the trigger for playful exploration. The focus on fun, rather than task, opened up opportunities to experiment with technology without fear or failure, and for individual movements for have value, thus empowering those with profound disabilities to participate using their own movement in meaningful ways

Imagining a digital future: how could we design for enchantment within the special education curriculum?

The implementation of the new “Successful Futures” curriculum in the UK, means that learners between the ages of 3 to 16 will be challenged to use digital media to develop their life skills, personal confidence, work skills, career planning, health and well-being (Donaldson, 2015). Teaching staff, responsible for delivering this multi-faceted programme for learners with profound disabilities, have reported that the perceived benefits of technology are misaligned to individual needs and capabilities. This is particularly evident when combined with a developmental approach that favours the achievement of milestones rather than discovery-led, task free, interaction (Simmons, 2019). The work reported here aims to directly address these gaps. We describe a series of Digital Imagining workshops, which set out to encourage creative and co-productive relationships between teaching professionals, academic artists, makers and computer scientists. During the activities, we experimented with digital fabrication tools as a means to envision contingent, imaginative interactions between learners with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities (PMLD), other people and their environment. In collectively critiquing the ideas developed during the workshops participants recognized the benefit of simple contingent, cause and effect actions for drawing attention to the material properties of objects. Almost seamlessly, these sensory explorations became the trigger for more complex ideas for integrating the demands of the digital curriculum into more natural daily scenarios. The shared process of ideation and tinkering was reported to be vital in generating a shift toward inclusion as a creative, imaginative and expressive counterpoint to the pervasive emphasis on utility and function

Perform- Digital movement in the making

Commercial sensor-based technologies offer efficient mechanisms for capturing detailed movement data today. These predetermined calibrations and representations are used to design solutions that indicate how people should move in order to achieve certain goals. This presents an ethical power imposition that resides in the computational prowess within processing to activate prompts and smooth out errors by ignoring or discarding movement outside of what is deemed useful. Our discussions on movement come out of two research projects Somantics and Sync in which we developed digital tools to observe changes in user agency when movement becomes the focus of a chain of responsive actions and reactions - affect and effect - made possible through digitization. The projects were undertaken with people with atypical movement experience, from expert dancers to children on the autistic spectrum. We discuss the need for reframing an ethical and critical discourse on digital movement to understand the sensate and social means with which we all use our bodies to regulate and rehearse, communicate and connect

Somatopia - Creative computing through inclusive design

The overarching aim of our research has been bridge the gap between emotionally compelling, open source technology innovation and disenfranchised groups who could benefit from the opportunity to engage with such technologies “as themselves”1. We have therefore designed a prototype system, Somatopia, which uses the Raspberry Pi2 computer to create video projections that respond to a variety of gross motor interactions. Our earliest iterations of Somatopia evolved during a series of drama-based workshops with adults with a range of cognitive and physical impairments. Adopting methods that address self-awareness and expressive communication through movement enabled us to participate in activities with the group on an equal basis. The paper describes how the techniques provided a predictable framework for collaboration, which, in turn, directly influenced the design of the interactions

Movement matters

Movement is the human communicative tissue that weaves together our social anticipations and creative aspirations . When we consider movement as a fluid, dynamic process of transmission - from tacit sensations to more explicit, expressive bids for communication-it is possible to trace incremental developments of self, culture and futur

Designing inclusive & playful technologies for pre-school children

This paper reports on an investigation into the potential of everyday technologies to foster playful experiences for young children prior to their formal education. The aim is to consider how best to design age appropriate experiences that are desirable and useful within pre-school settings, and to assist practitioners in experimenting with technologies in the early years school curriculum. This phase of the study focuses on observations of the real-time, non-digital play of young children in a pre-school playgroup and the subsequent introduction of group activities with affordable, non-specialist devices such as ReacTickles, Wii remote and microphone. The study captures the vital inspiration phase of design research. By utilizing observation and interview as an analytical framework to help practitioners to articulate the nuances of playful interaction, the designers have been able to draw early conclusions that provide the guiding principles for future design

Application of A Computer Animation Technique to Assist the Teaching of Pre-Handwriting Skills to Children with Coordination Difficulties/Dyspraxia

We have proposed a method to assist children with coordination difficulties or dyspraxia to improve their handwriting skills. We have chosen an animation technique called ‘Rotoscopy’, a method that normally been used in animation and film production and adapted it to Rotoscopy Prehandwriting Interface (RPI) prototypes using the interactive whiteboard (IWB) as interaction device. The motivation of this research is to discover how efficient if Rotoscopy is used beyond its normal purposes? Does it give benefits in terms of behavioural and motivational aspect rather than commercial and profit point of view? Implementation of RPI prototypes has taken place through series of workshops with a teacher and a group of children with handwriting difficulties at a special education school in Caerphilly, Cardiff, United Kingdom. In the workshops children were given pre-handwriting activities in two different environments. They have been trained to use RPI prototypes and IWB as well as using pen and paper. Their activities and action has been observed and recorded using video camera. Evaluation method is based-on video analysis of children’s pre-handwriting result and their reaction and motivation during the workshop. It was learnt that majority of children who used RPI prototypes and IWB have produced better results in terms of accuracy of the drawing as compared to results of pen and paper activities. Furthermore the children are more motivated to use the prototypes and IWB rather than using pen and paper. The study’s contribution includes offering a new way to improve children’s prehandwriting skills using computer animation technique and touch-based devices