Duration: January ’15 - April ‘15
Semester project: Tangible User Interfaces
Project domain: Human Computer Interaction Design, User Experience Design
Keywords: Tangible learning toolkit, Tangible interfaces, Educational technology
Project guide: Assistant Professor Keyur Sorathia, Department of Design, IIT Guwahati
Group size: Four
More details…
Project Brief:
Following User Centred Design methodology, I along with three team mates, designed, developed and user tested a tangible learning toolkit for specially abled students of age group 3 to 7 years. We conducted contextual inquiry with the teachers and students from Playgroup at Shishu Sarothi, Guwahati.
Responsibilities: Literature research, User research, Affinity analysis, Ideation, Prototyping, Design evaluation
Introduction:
The goal of the project was to design multimodal tangible interactive educational technology for specially abled students. The objective was to enhance learnability, memorability and engagement of students and reduce effort of teachers. Our team collaborated with Shishu Sarothi, a rehabilitation centre for specially abled people in Guwahati. We focused on ‘Playgroup’ unit which involves 3 to 7 year old specially abled students with Cerebral Palsy, Down Syndrome, Autism, mild or moderate Mental Retardation, Dyslexia, ADHD, learning disabilities, Hydrocephalic Cases, Speech Impairment or Hearing Impairment.
Methodology:
We followed User Centred Design methodology. It involved review based research clarification, comprehensive descriptive study, prescriptive study and preliminary design evaluation. The various phases are described below:
Literature research:
Various domains involved in our literature research include instructional design, educational psychology, educational technology with respect to special education. We also studied about the concerned disabilities along with the subject area of interaction design, user experience design, multimodal interaction and tangible user interface.
User research:
Our field study involved contextual inquiry, silent observation and artifact analysis. It comprised of two phases; the first being systems study of Shishu Sarothi. We did qualitative user research with teachers from all five units, a clinical psychologist, a SME and administrative staff of the organization. Following analysis of the collected data, our group focused on Playgroup unit; thus stepping into phase two of user research involving the 3 teachers of Playgroup and the clinical psychologist. Semi-structured individual and group interviews were done mainly in the form of contextual inquiry guided by an appropriate questionnaire involving topics such as objectives of Playgroup, activities conducted & methodology, problems faced etc. We also did artifact and activity analysis, report analysis and silent observation of the classroom activities.
Data analysis:
The empirical data was analyzed following single case and cross case affinity analysis and thematic analysis. Playgroup unit has a total of 18 specially abled students belonging to the age group of 3-6 years with disabilities such as Cerebral Palsy, Down Syndrome, mild to moderate Mental Retardation, Hydrocephalic Cases, Speech or Hearing Impairment. They have basic concepts and ability to learn the rudiments like alphabets and numbers. The objective of the class is to develop the students’ daily living activities, early learning skills along with motor, language and cognitive development; with the aim of promoting them to higher classes or conventional schools according to their abilities. Activities carried out involve teaching the students to identify of fruits, vegetables, animals; read and write alphabets and numbers; solve picture puzzles; play with blocks for cognitive development; sing rhymes etc. This is achieved as the teacher repeatedly presents the students with either a picture, 3D model, verbal input, guided motor task or demonstrations.
Major challenges faced while conducting such activities include requirement of extensive repetition of the concepts by the teacher resulting in high work load. Also, each student require to be individually attended by the teacher as each of them have different learning requirements and pace. The number of teachers being 3 and the number of students being 18, each student gets very less time of individual attention and guidance from the teacher leading to longer learning duration. While a student is being attended by the teacher, all other students need to wait for their turn. Also, the learning process was not interactive leading to disengagement of the students. A student learns about two fruits in a duration of 3 months with such an approach. Hence, looking at the amount of time spent, and the difficulty associated in the current way of teaching/learning there was an urgent need of intervention to make the entire process much easier, engaging and aimed at improving learning curve and reducing teacher’s intervention.
Ideation:
We did brainstorming around the major identified challenges, mentioned above, trying to incorporate tangible interface in an appropriate way. The findings from the user research were taken into consideration as well such as the students like colors, music/rhyme, reinforcements etc. The ideas were then selected using weighted matrix with the criteria being simple to learn, teaching of multiple concepts, engaging, assistance requirement, implementation feasibility, technology benchmarking etc.
Solution:
Tangify is a tangible multimodal interactive teaching/learning toolkit focused at reducing the requirement of concept repetition, to the students of Playgroup, by the teachers along with making the learning process more efficient. It also reduces teacher’s intervention thus addressing the identified issue of low teacher student ratio leading to long learning duration. Though teachers intervention cannot be completely reduced due to the severity of the problem but our system aims at reducing the effort of the teacher while making the learning process much more playful and engaging for students. This particular high fidelity prototype is to teach the students about different characteristics of fruits. Tangify comprises of a Makey-Makey micro controller platform, fruit tokens and a laptop. The platform comprises of 4 compartments, each associated with a particular characteristic of fruits (name & spelling, color, line drawing or eating action). The fruit tokens, include 3D plastic models, can be placed in the compartments. The system is constrained to allow placement of not more than one token at a time. The token placement leads to feedback on the laptop in the form of animated video including verbal feedback and music. The feedback is the information of the particular characteristic of the fruit based on the chosen fruit token and compartment placed in. For example, if ‘Mango’ token is placed in the ‘colour’ compartment of the platform, the system would recite, ‘mongo is yellow’ accompanied with animated visual and music. The animated video repeats multiple times thus reducing the need for the teacher to do the same. We have also introduced a Tangify quiz module wherein once a student has learnt about certain fruits he/she can answer the questions by placing the appropriate token in the compartments of the system. The feedback contains engaging animated video and audio involving reinforcement in terms of star and clapping or a wrong sign and the correct answer along with encouraging successive attempts. Tangify is a flexible concept that can be extended for teaching/learning other similar concepts such as animals, vegetables etc. and related numerous characteristics.
Prototyping:
We made a high fidelity prototype of Tangify using Makey-Makey micro controller connected to a laptop, PVC sheets for the compartments and token base, 3d plastic fruit models for tokens, wires, metal pins and plates, decorative paper etc. In the tokens, 3d models were used to aid recognition as compared to pictures as found from user research. The compartment and token system are physically designed incorporating constrains in order to allow placement of only one token in the platform at a time. Each token has a metal plate at its base, fitted in a particular orientation. Placing the token in a compartment completes a specific circuit of the Makey-Makey and sends the computer a keyboard message. The message is read by Processing, and a video on the particular characteristic of the fruit is displayed on the display screen. We also incorporated various findings from user study such as the students are fond of bright colours, animated videos, rhymes, reinforcement in form of star or clapping etc.
Design evaluation:
We conducted preliminary design evaluation at Shishu Sarothi with 8 students and 1 teacher from playgroup. The prototype was contextually setup in the classroom followed by demonstration to the teacher regarding usage and functionality of the system. Usability testing was done separately with each student; each of them initially briefed about the system followed by the testing involving minimal assistance from the teacher, as would be the case in a general classroom scenario, and least intervention & instructions from our team. We guided accordingly whenever any issues aroused. Hence the students were allowed to interact with the system freely as per their own understanding.
Most of the students were able to easily figure out how the system is supposed to be used following the demonstration. Interaction with the system did not require much assistance from the teacher. The students were self-motivated and excited to use the system by being engaged in the learning process in an interactive way. This in turn would enhance their learnability and memorability. The reinforcement style of the quiz module was enjoyed by the students, especially when they got the answer correct. Other findings include feedback from teacher to avoid usage of multiple colors in the interface, specifically colors that confuse with the colors of the fruit. Also, there was difficulty in putting the token in the compartment, due to physical disabilities of some students, and hence the gap between the two needs to be increased.
We intend to iterate the prototype incorporating the results from the design evaluation followed by next stage of usability testing involving testing of the prototype over a reasonable amount of time to see it’s effect on the learning curve of the students.
