Sep 11, 2009

Ru Zarin's Interactive Multi-touch Applications for the Cognitively Disabled: Social stories, talking symbols, a piano, and more!

 http://uidresearch.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/multi_touch_trollskogen_1024.jpg


Trollskogen Final Demo from Ru Zarin on Vimeo.

The above video is a demonstration of Ru Zarin's masters degree project at Umea Universitet.

This project examined ways to use multi-touch technologies to support communication and learning among children with Down syndrome, autism, and related diagnoses within the age group of 5-8. I especially liked the animated social story application.

"Trollskogen is a communicative framework designed to enhance communication among people with cognitive disabilities. The forest is split up into interactive modules that provide a fun and engaging learning environment while helping improve on certain aspects of speech, reading/writing and symbol based languages. This framework has been deployed on a custom multi-touch table prototype built at the Interactive institute Umeå, enabling the children to interact with their fingers in a more natural, intuitive way rather than a traditional keyboard/mouse setup."

RELATED READING
RELATED VIDEOS OF THE PROJECT DEVELOPMENT

Ru collaborated with the illustrator Linda Arvidsson for the characters and objects found in the troll forest theme.  

I especially liked the Troll Forest Cabin, which is shown in the social stories section of the video.

http://uidresearch.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/sketch_cabin.jpg

Cross-posted on the TechPsych blog.

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