WE ARe ABLE, DISPLAYS and PLAY: Fostering Collaboration, Creativity and Communication between Disadvantaged Children
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Central Lancashire
Department Name: Sch of Comput Engin and Physical Sci
Abstract
For most children playing with other children is an integral part of their learning and development. Through play children learn life skills essential for future development. Collaboration, communication and creativity are all key components of play. When one or more of these is removed the educational and developmental benefits of the play experience are reduced. For children with normal capabilities this is rarely a persistent issue. For children with disabilities, collaboration, communication and creativity can often be restricted because of their impairment. This often leads to the child feeling marginalised and left out. The research aims to reduce this by using assistive technologies to create a more inclusive play experience between children of different capabilities. Given the time available, the research currently has a focus on supporting two groups of children with impairments, children with autism and children with visual impairments.
The research uses personal wearable display devices (such as META-Pro glasses, Google glass or Optinvent-ORA glasses) as the main tool to enhance the play experience. As well as a speaker and a semi transparent video display that the user wears in front of the eyes, a number of these devices also contain sensors such as an accelerometer, compass, camera and microphone. The research aims to use these sensors to provide children with supplementary information about the current play session that they may not have been previously able to access or understand because of their impairment, thus maximising the learning and developmental benefits of the shared play experience.
The work aims to use computer vision and augmented reality (AR) technologies to create a bridge between a physical and a virtual play space. While the physical space that the children will use is shared and will remain the same for everyone, the virtual space that is projected through the devices worn by the children can be personalised to each child according to their needs and capabilities. This level of personalisation will create a more inclusive play experience and reduce the likelihood of children feeling marginalised.
The focus of the play sessions will be play with Lego bricks and the research has the support of the Lego Foundation (which is the charitable arm of the Lego Group, the third largest manufacturer of play materials in the world). Lego play has been shown to have many developmental benefits and teaches children many skills, such as fine motor skills, sorting skills, basic mathematics, problem solving and teamwork. The effectiveness of some of these skills can be reduced when a child has an impairment. For example, a child with autism may have difficulty understanding other children or expressing his or herself to others, or a visually impaired child may have difficulty searching for, or finding, a particular type of brick. Re-representing aspects of play in a way the child is better able to perceive, or simply by providing assistance in a particular task, can go a long way towards allowing children of different capabilities to effectively play together.
As well as innovating in the technical use of wearable displays, and seeking to design software solutions that work for children with impairments, the research will also produce two inclusive play activity packs for use with wearable display devices in both schools and at home/activity centres. An online community resource called the 'WE ARe ABLE Community Portal' will allow parents/teachers/developers to extend the work and customise the activity packs to their particular needs beyond the life of the project.
The research uses personal wearable display devices (such as META-Pro glasses, Google glass or Optinvent-ORA glasses) as the main tool to enhance the play experience. As well as a speaker and a semi transparent video display that the user wears in front of the eyes, a number of these devices also contain sensors such as an accelerometer, compass, camera and microphone. The research aims to use these sensors to provide children with supplementary information about the current play session that they may not have been previously able to access or understand because of their impairment, thus maximising the learning and developmental benefits of the shared play experience.
The work aims to use computer vision and augmented reality (AR) technologies to create a bridge between a physical and a virtual play space. While the physical space that the children will use is shared and will remain the same for everyone, the virtual space that is projected through the devices worn by the children can be personalised to each child according to their needs and capabilities. This level of personalisation will create a more inclusive play experience and reduce the likelihood of children feeling marginalised.
The focus of the play sessions will be play with Lego bricks and the research has the support of the Lego Foundation (which is the charitable arm of the Lego Group, the third largest manufacturer of play materials in the world). Lego play has been shown to have many developmental benefits and teaches children many skills, such as fine motor skills, sorting skills, basic mathematics, problem solving and teamwork. The effectiveness of some of these skills can be reduced when a child has an impairment. For example, a child with autism may have difficulty understanding other children or expressing his or herself to others, or a visually impaired child may have difficulty searching for, or finding, a particular type of brick. Re-representing aspects of play in a way the child is better able to perceive, or simply by providing assistance in a particular task, can go a long way towards allowing children of different capabilities to effectively play together.
As well as innovating in the technical use of wearable displays, and seeking to design software solutions that work for children with impairments, the research will also produce two inclusive play activity packs for use with wearable display devices in both schools and at home/activity centres. An online community resource called the 'WE ARe ABLE Community Portal' will allow parents/teachers/developers to extend the work and customise the activity packs to their particular needs beyond the life of the project.
Planned Impact
The project will directly benefit children who are currently disadvantaged in group play situations (such as children with visual impairment or children with autism). As the research aims to help support group play and the benefits it has (such as improved teamwork, confidence, communication skills, problem solving skills, fine motor skills and increased physical activity) the project also has societal and economic advantages that will benefit the wider population, such as better health through physical play, increased employability prospects in later life and a better quality of life. In 2012 there were more than 60,000 children in UK schools with autism spectrum disorders and over a half of these children are likely to have difficulties that prevent them functioning well with other children and thus limit their possibilities for play. More than 25,000 children have visual impairments and over half of these are educated in mainstream schools where they will benefit from any technologies that allow their improved play with their peers. Whilst there will be immediate benefits for children engaging in the project, it would be expected that with prolonged use of the technologies the wider benefits associated with long term use (such as increased confidence and teamwork skills) will stay with the children through life.
As well as benefiting children with impairments directly, parents and teachers will also benefit from the research as the work will produce a set of activity packs for use in schools and at home that will allow children with impairments to 'better play' with children with different capabilities. Teachers and carers (parents mainly) that work with children with disabilities are under considerable stress in ensuring an equitable and enriching activity for not only the children with impairments but also for the other children in any play or school session. Depending on the extent of the child's impairment, children are often placed in a school with children with no impairments or with children with a diverse range of impairments and capabilities. By reducing the barriers to play children with impairments face, teachers and parents are better able to take advantage of the learning and development benefits that play offers and, with carefully designed activities, tested in a research study, these adults will be able to focus less on ensuring the personalised play experience for each individual child's needs and more on the collaborative play experience of all participating children.
The technologies that are being produced will be made available, through open source software, to developers across the UK (and beyond). This will provide opportunities for SMEs to build on the code and on the solutions and develop additional activates and associated solutions. The economic benefits of the UK being an early adopter of wearable 'glasses' type technology is significant. time-scale for these benefits to be received is very short.
Working with Lego, the project aims to impact on the design of toys for collaborative play. The software developed and the solutions that are created will be evaluated with and by Lego researchers with the aim to provide indications for play environments that use virtual and physical playthings. It is expected that in the three or four years following the project, a suite of enhanced play experiences will be commercially available for children, especially for therapeutic play. The WE ARe ABLE project will have informed these designs of the future.
As well as benefiting children with impairments directly, parents and teachers will also benefit from the research as the work will produce a set of activity packs for use in schools and at home that will allow children with impairments to 'better play' with children with different capabilities. Teachers and carers (parents mainly) that work with children with disabilities are under considerable stress in ensuring an equitable and enriching activity for not only the children with impairments but also for the other children in any play or school session. Depending on the extent of the child's impairment, children are often placed in a school with children with no impairments or with children with a diverse range of impairments and capabilities. By reducing the barriers to play children with impairments face, teachers and parents are better able to take advantage of the learning and development benefits that play offers and, with carefully designed activities, tested in a research study, these adults will be able to focus less on ensuring the personalised play experience for each individual child's needs and more on the collaborative play experience of all participating children.
The technologies that are being produced will be made available, through open source software, to developers across the UK (and beyond). This will provide opportunities for SMEs to build on the code and on the solutions and develop additional activates and associated solutions. The economic benefits of the UK being an early adopter of wearable 'glasses' type technology is significant. time-scale for these benefits to be received is very short.
Working with Lego, the project aims to impact on the design of toys for collaborative play. The software developed and the solutions that are created will be evaluated with and by Lego researchers with the aim to provide indications for play environments that use virtual and physical playthings. It is expected that in the three or four years following the project, a suite of enhanced play experiences will be commercially available for children, especially for therapeutic play. The WE ARe ABLE project will have informed these designs of the future.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Brendan Cassidy (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
| Description | The first part of the research provided insights into the different types of digital augmentations children found useful when participating in different types of play. Through a participatory design study (where we included children as design partners) We examined three distinctive types of play. Constructive play (e.g. play with Lego), Role play (e.g. play with toy food pieces) and Creative play (e.g. play with a colouring book) and found there was a distinct difference in the type of digital augmentations preferred between play activities. A Classification of digital 'augmentations' for play was produced to help designers choose the most appropriate augmented reality (AR) components to implement when creating assistive AR play experiences. As part of this work a new low fidelity prototyping method was also developed to design and evaluate AR interfaces with children. Participatory design is an important tool used by the 'Child Computer Interaction' (CCI) research community and the development of this method provides the CCI community with a way to design AR interfaces with children at low cost and without the need for access to expensive AR headsets. A valued type of augmentation that emerged specifically for constructive play (play with Lego) was that of 'item locators' or directional prompting of the location of key pieces of Lego important for that session. The second part of the research focused on designing and evaluating methods for item location that would be suitable for use by visually impaired people wearing AR headsets such as Microsoft HoloLens. Four different approaches to directional prompting were developed and evaluated, each using different types of sound to represent a 'virtual radar sweep' to help identify the possible location of an item of interest. Each design had its own qualities and limitations. Some, such as those that used a beat to denote the movement of the radar arm, allowed users perceive a directional prompt more accurately than others. Others, such as those that used a constant sound or changes in pitch to denote the movement of the radar arm, allowed user to perceive a directional prompt a little less accurately but much quicker than other methods. This led to the discovery of insights for designers creating AR systems that integrate non-visual directional prompting. These initial discoveries have laid the foundations for the work to be extended to provide directional prompts, but also 'audio snapshots' of a play area/scene. A serious game has also been developed as part of this phase in the research which is designed to train children in the use of the directional prompting methods developed. A Soccer game aimed specifically at visually impaired children aims to do this in an engaging way that will hold the children's attention while improving their skills using the directional prompting system. |
| Exploitation Route | As indicated in the projects Pathways to Impact document, the outputs of the project have the potential to be extended beyond the 'children and play' focus of the research to everyday life settings for adults. The insights gained in phase two of the research are applicable to almost any scenario where the user of an AR headset may require non-visual directional prompts, for example in situations where a person has a temporary loss of vision. Or where a person needs supplementary information about a part of the environment they are in that they cannot currently see (e.g. behind them). There are plans to extend the work to create a more general assistive AR tool for visually impaired people to provide 'audio snapshots' of objects in a users immediate environment. |
| Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism |
| URL | http://www.weareable.org.uk |
| Description | The research has had an impact in the area of participatory design with children. It has provided a new method for researchers to elicit preferences and requirements for the design of wearable augmented reality applications with children. Augmented Reality is a difficult concept to describe to small children due to its abstract nature. The method pioneered by the research equips designers with a toolset that allows children to better conceptualise augmented reality and capture their ideas in a variety of different contexts. Beyond the scope of the original project the method produced has been subsequently applied in the participatory design of augmented museum exhibits aimed at children. The research has also had an impact in the area of assistive technology for visually impaired people. A non-verbal, non-visual directional prompting system designed for use initially in AR headsets was conceptualised, designed and evaluated. The prompting system produced has applicability beyond the initial scope of play/children and can be applied in any physical environment where a digital representation of 3D spatial data can be acquired. The system can also extend beyond the visually impaired user group and can be used by people who are temporarily visually impaired (e.g. smoky or foggy environments) or people who are not visually impaired but are unable to directly observe their immediate surroundings (e.g. if a user is unable to turn around and directly observe objects behind them). Beyond the UK, Cassidy was able to present the outputs generated by the project and the wider assistive AR use case directly to companies working on the earliest augmented reality headsets (such as the Meta-01 and Meta-02).Meta (A silicon valley start-up, not to be confused with Meta Platforms Inc.) attracted funding of $73 million since 2013 to develop some of the earliest wearable AR headsets available to the public. As a result of the project Cassidy was invited to participate in the Meta 'Pioneers Program' and worked directly with Meta Engineers over a series of workshops on developing assistive AR use cases. This academic/industrial relationship helped ensure accessibility was considered a key potential use case in some the earliest 'off the shelf' AR headsets produced. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2016 |
| Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal |
| Title | A Participatory Design Method for Co-Design of Wearable Augmented Reality Applications with Children |
| Description | The Tool/Method developed provides a bridge between the abstract concept of 'Augmented Reality' and concrete, physical concepts already familiar to younger children. Image based design packs were produced, consisting of clear glasses for children to wear, clear acetate covers for data capture and printed images of playful scenarios. A protocol was developed which explained the idea of 'Augmented Reality' in relation to the design packs and glasses they were given. The method provides researchers with a toolkit to allow particpatory designers to capture childrens insights for playful augmented reality applications in a way that is easier for children to understand. |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2015 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The method was subsequently adapted and used by our team in the participatory design of augmented reality museum exhibits. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58550-5_4 |
| URL | http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/13312/ |