Despite the great number of commercial or research technologies that are devoted to children suffering from disabilities, limited studies explore how to design and evaluate those game-based learning tools that are appropriate for this target group. The aim of this thesis turns to design and develop an efficient tool capable of supporting children with intellectual disabilities, expecially those one with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD), exploiting new motion based touchless devices ensuring both a natural human-computer interaction and the usability, as very immediate and spontaneous. Moreover, thank to the collaboration with three therapeutic and educational centers, who participated in the phases of development, design and evalutation, a structured set of generic and specific guidelines has been distilled. These guidelines informed the design of three touchless games aimed to improve children's motor, cognitive and social skills. Considering every child's uniqueness, the games have to be strongly customized and structured as "user friendly" planned, in order to allow therapeutic purposes, both at the center and in remote mode. Finally, these tools were evaluated in a controlled study, remarking improvements for the areas of interest. In conclusion, the results from this study confirms and extends the findings of prior research, providing additional empirical evidence that touchless gaming does have a strong potential to improve autistic children's attention and motor-visual skills.
Nonostante le tecnologie, sia commerciali che di ricerca, dedicate ai bambini soggetti a disabilità siano molteplici, gli studi svolti su quelle che sono le componenti necessarie sia alla progettazione sia a valutazione dell'efficacia degli strumenti di apprendimento game-based, sono ancora piuttosto limitati. L'obiettivo di questa tesi è quello di progettare e sviluppare uno strumento adatto a supportare l'apprendimento e lo sviluppo di bambini con disabilità intellettuali, in particolare di coloro affetti da ASD, sfruttando l'innovazione tecnologica introdotta dai nuovi dispositivi di tipo touchless motion based, che garantiscono un'interazione naturale con il computer ed un'usabilità immediata e spontanea. Grazie alla collaborazione con tre centri terapeutici ed educativi che hanno partecipato alle fasi di sviluppo, progettazione, sperimentazione e valutazione, sono state stilate una serie di linee guida generali e specifiche necessarie allo sviluppo di tre giochi volti a stimolarne le capacità cognitive, motorie e sociali. I giochi, data l'unicità di ogni bambino, hanno forti requisiti di personalizzazione e sono strutturati e pensati "user friendly" in modo da permetterne l'uso a scopi terapeutici, sia nel centro che da remoto. Tali strumenti sono stati, infine, valutati in uno studio controllato. I risultati ottenuti confermano ed estendono le ricerche precedenti, fornendo ulteriori prove empiriche che il gioco touchless presenta un forte potenziale per migliorare l'attenzione e le abilità visuo-motorie di questi bambini.
Applicazioni interattive touchless motion based per la disabilità infantile
CLASADONTE, FRANCESCO
2013/2014
Abstract
Despite the great number of commercial or research technologies that are devoted to children suffering from disabilities, limited studies explore how to design and evaluate those game-based learning tools that are appropriate for this target group. The aim of this thesis turns to design and develop an efficient tool capable of supporting children with intellectual disabilities, expecially those one with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD), exploiting new motion based touchless devices ensuring both a natural human-computer interaction and the usability, as very immediate and spontaneous. Moreover, thank to the collaboration with three therapeutic and educational centers, who participated in the phases of development, design and evalutation, a structured set of generic and specific guidelines has been distilled. These guidelines informed the design of three touchless games aimed to improve children's motor, cognitive and social skills. Considering every child's uniqueness, the games have to be strongly customized and structured as "user friendly" planned, in order to allow therapeutic purposes, both at the center and in remote mode. Finally, these tools were evaluated in a controlled study, remarking improvements for the areas of interest. In conclusion, the results from this study confirms and extends the findings of prior research, providing additional empirical evidence that touchless gaming does have a strong potential to improve autistic children's attention and motor-visual skills.| File | Dimensione | Formato | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
tesi.pdf
non accessibile
Descrizione: Testo della tesi
Dimensione
34.05 MB
Formato
Adobe PDF
|
34.05 MB | Adobe PDF | Visualizza/Apri |
I documenti in POLITesi sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
https://hdl.handle.net/10589/92618