“Today I Tell” A Comics and Story Creation App for People with Autism Spectrum Condition

ABSTRACT

This article describes the design, development, and evaluation of an application to help people with autism spectrum condition (ASC) express themselves through the creation of stories and comics. The intended platform of the application is touchscreen devices. The design process follows a human-centered design approach involving caregivers, teachers, usability experts, primary school students, and people with ASC. The characteristics considered are explained to design and implement the application, as well as the different evaluation steps. The prototype design was evaluated with 36 experts (teachers, caregivers, and usability experts). Next, 14 primary school students and 10 participants from a special education institution tested the application. Among all the participants, five students of the primary school institution have attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and five students of the special education institution had ASC. The feedback gathered shows the importance of multidisciplinary teams in developing an application aimed at people with special needs. Non-functional features such as usability and accessibility can be bypassed by developers and this is the point at which teachers, caregivers, usability experts, and even the end users of the application can provide their insights in order to improve the product during its development phase. This also reduces the costs that would be incurred if the final product had to be changed after its development.

Acknowledgments

We thank the Nuestra Señora del Recuerdo school and the Alenta school for their participation in this study, APNABA for providing feedback during the design stage, and all the professionals involved in the various phases on the project. Most of all, we thank the participants who made this project possible.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

Neither of the authors have any conflicts of interest in writing this manuscript. The names of the students and relevant information do not appear anywhere so that the participants cannot be identified.

Supplementary material

Supplementary material for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Estefania Martin

Estefania Martin is an associate professor at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. HCI, learning, and disabilities are her research interests. She leads Blue Thinking, an application that allows the person with ASD to learn programming; DEDOS project, which provides tools for creating educational activities on multiple devices, and ClipIt, a video-based platform.

Carlos Cupeiro

Carlos Cupeiro is a computer engineer. He was working on the app “Today I tell”. Currently he is a senior quality assurance engineer at CMC.

Laura Pizarro

Laura Pizarro is a computer engineer. She won the first prize in Da Vinci Awards (FAMMA – Association of People with Disabilities from Madrid) with the app “Today I tell”. Currently she is a quality assurance engineer at Paradigma Digital.

David Roldán-Álvarez

David Roldán-Álvarez is an associate professor at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain. His research interests include programming, multitouch tabletops, and computer engineering applied to education.

Guadalupe Montero-de-Espinosa

Guadalupe Montero-De-Espinosa is the head of Alenta, a Special Educational Centre of Madrid. She is leading multiple projects related to the use of the technology for intervention in autism, such as Leo and Lula, method for global reading in students with ASD or Blue Thinking.