I've been thinking about creating my first iPad app, and as I was searching for information, I came across a few articles related to Apple's new iOS 5 that I found interesting.
Because my target user group includes young people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), I was intrigued by the possibility that the facial recognition APIs might provide a means of assessing mood or emotional states. Most of us understand that our faces function as mirrors to feelings, and we use our facial expressions to communicate our feelings to others. Unfortunately, this is a concept that is difficult for young people with ASD to understand. My hunch is that there is an "app for that".
I'd love to great to create a little iPad app for young people with ASD for education, intervention, and/or communication activities that incorporates the facial recognition feature!
Apple's iOS facial recognition could lead to Kinect-like interaction Darrell Etherington, GigaOm/Reuters, 7/27/11 Here is a quote from the above article: "You could create apps that track a user’s eye movement and dynamically change content accordingly, for instance. App developers might even be able to use data gathered from facial recognition APIs to identify so-called “hotspots,” providing insight about where a user is looking most within an app and arranging content accordingly. In time, an iPhone app might even be able to assess the emotional state of the user, based on whether they’re frowning or smiling, and address the user in a manner appropriate to their mood. It might also be able to tell how engaged users are with mobile ads and content, which might be useful for iAd customers, among others."
Tracy Boyer Clark, founding manager and editor of Innovative Interactivity, recently posted a nicely curated list of interesting people to follow on Google+.
Tracy is a fantastic resource for all things related to multimedia. Be sure to add her to the list. BTW, my Google+ Multimedia circle includes everyone on Tracy's list, and a few more.
Eric Sailers is a speech/language pathologist who has an extensive amount of experience using "apps" in educational settings. He's compiled a great list of apps and related resources on his blog: http://slpsharing.com/app-resources/
Eric spends some of his time giving presentations about the use of Apple's mobile devices in education. He's co-created a few apps, too!
Well before the iPad entered the market, researchers such as Dr. Juan Hourcade at the University of Iowa, began to develop multi-touch software to support young people with autism spectrum disorders and other disabilities. I've been following this research for a while, and was happy to discover that Dr. Hourcade's work was recently featured in a recent Wall Street Journal article and video.
If you are a parent or work with a young person with special needs, you might be interested in learning more about Windows-7 based touch-screen software. The software shown in the video below, as well as related resources, are available for free on the Open Autism Software website.
I work with young people with a range of disabilities, including autism, as a school psychologist. One of my schools is a program that is technology-rich. Although we don't have iPads, there is a SMARTBoard in every classroom and in other rooms around the school. We have a Wii, a few multi-touch all-in-one PC's, and recently received two Dell multi-touch tablet PCs.
I noticed that Dr. Hourcade is looking for people who'd like to create similar apps for the iPad. I'd be interested in knowing anyone who might be working on this. I'd like to help in some way, but I don't have a lot of free time to do this on my own.
I have a new iPad2, and after playing around with a ton of apps, I was inspired to downloaded XCode4 and think about what I could create. I'm a Mac person at heart, but I learned to program within a Windows environment (C#). I need a way to maintain my programming skills and gradually learn a few new ones. This sort of project would be useful to me in my "day job", too!
SOMEWHAT RELATED 3D Interactive Heart, by 22Miles, on a Dell Latitude Xt2
"Kinect sound machines become prettier and easier with each development! The Kinect SoundWall is a drum beat music machine controlled by gestures and voice commands. This video by vertigosoftwaredisplays this digital music machine at work and how through various gesture and voice commands, users can create awesome beats to dance to. In the video, the user gestures to to certain blocks in the screen in order to create a beat there or render the beats void. Through various voice commands, the beat can start, increase tempo, stop etc. Through the proper integration of both voice and gesture commands, the Kinect SoundWall sets the standard for a great and efficient sound machine of the Kinect!"
"For more information about the Kinect SoundWall visit the project’s website."
