31564
Dynamic Process of Obtaining Stakeholders’ Feedback to Develop an Assistive Technology for Children with Asd; Increasing Social Participation
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by difficulty with communication and reciprocal interaction affecting social participation. The common social impairments experienced by children with ASD have a profound impact on daily functioning. Virtual-reality programs are affordable tools that can be used to improve social skills among children with ASD. These programs have the potential to be applied as tele-rehabilitation, as an alternative and promising way, to improve accessibility of health services. Despite the importance of developing a customer-based tele-rehabilitation program for children with ASD, there is no program incorporating stakeholders’ ideas.
Objectives:
This study aimed to involve stakeholders in designing and developing a tele-rehabilitation program to help children with ASD improve their socio-emotional skills.
Methods:
We involved over 100 stakeholders, including children with ASD (aged 8-11 years), youth with ASD (aged 13-17 years), their parents, and clinicians work in the field. Inclusion criteria were high functioning and verbal children and youth with ASD who can express their ideas; clinicians with at least one year working experiences in the field of ASD; and parents of a child diagnosed with ASD. All stakeholders needed to be able to communicate in English.
Using a participatory design approach to co-develop the product, this project included three stages of development.
(a) “pre-development phase” to explore ideas on direction and content of the program. First, 26 stakeholders (13 parents, four youth with ASD, and nine clinicians) were interviewed to highlight the focus and shape of the program, and then 63 stakeholders (39 parents and 24 clinicians) confirmed the content via online surveys.
(b) “Development phase”. Using iterative process, 20 youth/children with ASD (10 youth, 10 children) and their parents provided feedback on the design of the program.
(c) “Post-development phase”. The program was tested among 10 children with high functioning ASD. We evaluated the usability and efficacy of the program.
Results:
Findings showed that stakeholders emphasize the importance of perspective taking and social participation to target. Given the heterogeneity of children with ASD, stakeholders valued individualizing the program rather than trying to fit all children into one program. They described that adding adaptive features to customize the program based on stakeholders’ preferences and clinicians’ needs would optimize outcomes. Adjusting the audio-visual features and strategies to engage users such as modeling were also expressed. The program was easily used by children and they showed some improvements in socio-emotional skills, though it was not significant.
Conclusions:
This study introduces the development process of a novel program for children with ASD in collaboration with stakeholders. By involving stakeholders during the development, there will be an increased likelihood of uptake of the program. Stakeholders offer valuable perspectives that should be considered in rehabilitation settings both in research and practice.