An Interactive Abacus System For Children With Autism

With the development of interactive technology,more and more interaction design researchers have begun to pay attention to children with autism.However,most of the interactive systems designed for children with autism are specifically tailored to a single stage of autism and rarely involve the field of math and logic education.In practice,teachers rarely complete teaching tasks for a single stage of autism.This article aims to study how to enable multi-stage children to benefit from an interactive system and improve their social cooperation,mathematical and logical abilities.Researchers observed and interviewed teachers and children with autism at different stages of development to understand their behavioral characteristics,needs,and obstacles.Based on relevant work,the article proposes design principles for physical interactive systems aimed at multistage children with autism,including simplicity,diversity,accessibility,music therapy,and image demonstration,and verifies the effectiveness of the design principles by analyzing the results of a survey of 36 experts.The article then puts the design principles into practice,borrowing the concept of traditional abacus,the researchers designed an interactive abacus aimed at facilitating collaborative mathematical learning for children with autism at different stages of development.The article elaborates on the design process of the interactive abacus,proposes three initial appearance and interaction modes,and invites experts to participate in design decisions,ultimately determining the design form and four operating modes.The researchers then created a physical prototype of the abacus and invited five children with autism at different stages of development to participate in the experimental verification process.The experiment showed that the interactive abacus was attractive to children at different stages of development and provided enough space for children to participate in shared use.However,due to time constraints,the improvement of mathematical and logical abilities was not significant.This article innovatively proposes design principles for physical interactive systems aimed at multi-stage children with autism and uses the advantages of traditional Chinese abacus as a physical interactive tool to explore its value in the field of special education for children with autism,based on the preferences of children with autism and the needs of teachers.The article provides valuable design concepts and practical experience for other researchers.