RAPID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

USING WEB TECHNOLOGIES

An Application to Communicative Competence Promotion of Children with ASD

Margarida Lucas da Silva, Hugo Plácido da Silva

Instituto Superior Técnico, UTL, Lisboa, Portugal

Carla Simões

1,2

, Fernanda Botelho

Escola Superior de Saúde de Setúbal, IPS, Setúbal, Portugal

Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, UNL, Lisboa, Portugal

Tiago Guerreiro

Instituto Superior Técnico, UTL/ INESC-ID, Lisboa, Portugal

Keywords: RAD, Autism spectrum disorders, Communicative competence, Usability, Web technologies.

Abstract: This paper describes a framework, devised for rapid application development, and rapid application

customization of standalone multimedia and rich content software, targeted at students with special needs.

We present a proof-of-concept software application for promotion and training of social communication

skills in children with autism spectrum disorders. Web technologies and related standards are used as a way

of easily involving tutors, professionals in the field, and end users themselves in the software development

and customization process with minimal training and support.

1 INTRODUCTION

Continuous technical evolution in computer

programming has provided different abstraction

levels, gradually empowering a broader community,

which does not necessarily include technologically

proficient individuals, with tools for software

development (Hasse and Guy, 2007) (Martin, 1991).

Groundbreaking examples of this trend are the Wiki-

based tools for website construction (Barrett, 2008).

Although this has led to increasingly user-

friendly software applications, the target is mostly

the general population (Unger and Chandler, 2009).

For people with special needs, the learning curves

are highly user dependant, and even contents may

need to be adapted according to their specific needs

(Emiliani et al., 2009) (Helal et al., 2008).

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD)

are one such group; The difficulties of integration

and learning in special education schools, has led to

guidelines for integration of children with ASD into

regular education schools (UNESCO, 1994).

Computer aided tools play a major role in the

development of adequate educational responses in

this group, given the significant limitations to the

level of activity and participation that arise due to

permanent and continued difficulties in

communication, learning, mobility, autonomy,

interpersonal relationships and social participation.

Standard software applications are fitted with

functions and graphical stimuli that may lead to

distraction, dissatisfaction or frustration. In general,

tools with a high level of customization are required

(Boujarwah et al., 2010) (Putman, 2008).

Existing software tools applicable to training of

children with ASD, are generally targeted at

cognitive or communication enhancement skills

(Sensory Software, 2010) (People CD, 2008). These

either focus more on the delivery of rich multimedia

content, and less on the customization capabilities,

or vice versa.

It is still difficult for tutors, caregivers, and other

professionals in the field, to become autonomous in

583

Lucas da Silva M., da Silva H., Simões C., Botelho F. and Guerreiro T..

RAPID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT USING WEB TECHNOLOGIES - An Application to Communicative Competence Promotion of Children with

ASD.

DOI: 10.5220/0003169105830586

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Health Informatics (HEALTHINF-2011), pages 583-586

ISBN: 978-989-8425-34-8

 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

the process of managing and adapting the available

tools to the needs of children with ASD. Web

technologies and related standards have provided

several well-supported means, which can be easily

mastered by a broad audience. These technologies

can be extended to application development,

promoting the involvement of the “user in the loop”

due to the simplicity they provide.

This paper describes a standalone software

application for promotion and training of social

communication skills in children with ASD. It is

based on a framework for rapid application

development (RAD), and rapid application

customization (RAC). The underlying framework

can be generalized for the development of software

targeted at people with special needs, that tutors and

professionals in the field can fully manipulate

autonomously with little training and support.

The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 goes

through the RAD/RAC framework depicting how

we achieve the desired flexibility and adaptability;

Section 3 describes the software application for

communication skills training in children with ASD

while in Section 4 we present the experimental

evaluation performed with the target users; and

finally, Section 5 summarizes the main results and

conclusions.

2 FRAMEWORK

The framework was designed with both the end-

users and the people behind application management

in mind, targeting the seamless delivery of rich

multimedia content, while providing high

customization levels, easy content management and

maintenance by non-technologically proficient

individuals.

We found the answers to these requirements in

web technologies. Web browsers are currently the

best platforms for rich multimedia content delivery,

and web standards provide some of the best tools for

GUI layout and formatting. Figure 1 illustrates the

proposed framework, where the whole application

structure is supported around a web browser.

The presentation layer takes advantage of the

rendering capabilities, the logic layer relies on the

scripting capabilities, and the data/persistence layer

is supported on the capabilities of interoperability

between the browser and the OS. Furthermore,

modern web browsers have a set of plug-ins that

extends their multimedia capabilities.

Figure 1 depicts this architecture, which presents

interesting properties for RAD/RAC of full-featured

standalone multimedia applications: (a) no special

development tools are required; (b) the code is

interpreted rather than compiled; (c) changes to the

screen structure and navigation are straightforward;

and (d) content management can be performed in a

way that is familiar to most users.

Figure 1: Architecture of the proposed framework.

3 APPLICATION

Interpersonal communication and interaction skills

of children with ASD may be very limited, which

creates the need to develop a tool to support their

needs for integration in social life. This is important

not only for educational purposes, but also for

leisure, so that individuals can share their tastes with

others, comment on existing contents, and

communicate with their peers. Furthermore, tutors

have the need to setup contents adapted to the reality

of each group, to stimulate them and promote greater

autonomy in normal processes such as viewing

photos, listening to music, among other activities.

In this context, we developed a tool directed to

the specifics of this topic. It has the twofold

objective of encouraging socialization facilitating

interaction among children with ASD, while

allowing tutors to easily customize the contents and

look-and-feel of the tool because each child is

different, presenting divergent capabilities, habits

and needs.

The application can be fully customized with

icons, background images and the contents that

allow each child to be more effective while using it.

Children can even use their own drawings or

favourite images to better associate each feature of

the software with the underlying function.

Tutors have full control over the software and

they can intervene virtually at all levels. They can

HEALTHINF 2011 - International Conference on Health Informatics

584

act at the content level, where contents are structured

and organized under the application folder tree, just

as any other document is organized in regular

computer work, as we can see in figure 2. But they

can also act all the way up to the presentation level,

where they are able to manage the screen and

navigation structure by simply editing the HTML

files.

Figure 2: Example of a content folder tree.

All the activities are targeted at communication

skills training. They are based in multimedia

content: images, videos, audio, and stories that

children can autonomously browse through and

learn from. In addition there is also a message board,

and content preference sharing options, these being

the main contribution of the tool to the field, when

compared to existing work.

In the message board children can post messages

to their colleagues. The sender child has a buddy list

with names and photos of all counterparts, from

which the receiver colleague can be chosen. The

message can then be written either through text,

picture exchange (Bondy, 1994), or a combination of

both methods. When the receiver colleague opens

the message board, he will immediately be able to

see all of the messages sent to him by others. Figure

3 shows the message board screen.

For content preference sharing, associated to

each multimedia element (image, sound or video),

there is a positive and a negative preference option.

These allow the child to express and share with its

counterparts at any time, his/her preference

regarding the individual element. This information is

associated with the content and shown every time it

is accessed, allowing all children to see the opinion

of their colleagues. Figure 3 illustrates one of the

activities with the content preference-sharing pane

on the right area of the screen.

Figure 3: Message board of the application.

Figure 4: Activity with content preference-sharing pane.

4 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

The application was tested with three children with

ASD, attending a regular school and integrated in a

“unit of structured teaching”. Experiments were

conducted with the supervision of their tutor that,

over a period of 12 weeks, performed the tests and

collected evidence based on observation, which was

used to evaluate their behaviour before, throughout,

and after the platform being put to use.

Due to their several cognitive impairments, other

two children were not eligible to participate. For

initial customization of the software, the tutor listed

the different activities and asked one of the children

to draw images that, for her, would be more

meaningful of the underlying concept.

As a result, the children themselves created the

look-and-feel of the UI. By introducing contents

generated by their counterparts, children recognize

and develop a feeling of belong towards the

software, which works as an additional drive

towards its use. Starting with an empty working

base, the tutor was able to autonomously customize

and fine-tune the application contents within a 2-

week period.

Results with the children over a 3-month period

have shown that through the message board tutors

were able to stimulate the interest and need of

children’s communication. When using the software,

children would first browse through the message

board to read and reply to messages sent to them by

their tutors and by their counterparts.

There are some evidences that point up that this

tool can also be used to promote reading and writing

competences, through the interpretation of written

messages, and the stories’ retell (children can access

Photostory from the framework for this purpose). It

was also observed that the content preference

sharing options brought the children together over

common preferences through the software. The

opinion of their counterparts would drive each child

to access and also share their preference for a given

RAPID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT USING WEB TECHNOLOGIES - An Application to Communicative

Competence Promotion of Children with ASD

585

content in the application.

From the test period, preliminary results point to

the fact that children exhibit increased motivation

and interaction. Two of the subjects actually did not

interact at all with one another, and through the

implementation of methodology supported by the

software application they started to tolerate one

another and co-operate in the activities provided by

the software.

5 CONCLUSIONS

In this paper we described a standalone software

application for promotion and training of

communication skills in children with ASD. The

application is based on a RAD/RAC framework that

can be generalized for the development of other

software tools targeted at people with other special

needs in a “user in the loop” approach.

Our goal is to provide non-technologically

proficient users with the tools to manage the content

and customize the application. With the proposed

methodology even the users themselves can

participate in the customization process by creating

icons, background images and symbols that better

reflect the underlying concepts to their eyes.

The application was tested in a real world

scenario. Experimental evaluation has shown that,

within a 2-week period, the tutor was able to

autonomously fine-tune the tool and customize the

contents. Afterwards, the tool was implemented in

the daily routine of the children where it was in use

during a 3-month period.

Results have shown the effectiveness of the

proposed framework and application. Tutors are able

to autonomously manage the contents and customize

the application, according to the children’s attention

and response to contents. Children demonstrated

higher motivation and increased interaction patterns.

Future work will focus on portability and

community building, allowing the framework to be

used in mobile platforms and extending its local

capabilities with services made available by the

cloud.

REFERENCES

Barrett, D., 2008. Mediawiki (Wikipedia and Beyond),

O'Reilly Media.

Bondy A., Frost L., 1994. The Picture Exchange

Communication System. Focus on Autism and Other

Developmental Disabilities, Vol. 9, No. 3, 1-19.

Boujarwah, F., Hong, H., Isbell, J., Arriaga, R., Abowd,

G., 2010. Training Social Problem Solving Skills in

Adolescents with High-Functioning Autism. In

Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on

Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare.

Emiliani, P., Burzagli. L., Como, A., Gabbanini, F.,

Salminen, A., 2009. Assistive Technology from

Adapted Equipment to Inclusive Environments.

AAATE 2009, Volume 25 Assistive Technology

Research Series, IOS Press.

Haase, C., Guy, R., 2007. Filthy Rich Clients: Developing

Animated and Graphical Effects for Desktop Java

Applications, Addison Wesley.

Helal, A., Mokhtari, M., Abdulrazak, B.. 2008. The

Engineering Handbook of Smart Technology for

Aging, Disability and Independence, Wiley.

Martin, J., 1991. Rapid Application Development,

Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.

People CD, 2008. Zac Browser, The First Internet

Browser Developed Specifically for Children Living

with Variants of Autism Spectrum Disorders. Cited in

2010/07/01: http://www.zacbrowser.com/.

Putman, C., Chong, L., 2008. Software and Technologies

Designed for People with Autism: What do Users

Want?. In Proceedings of ASSETS 2008.

Sensory Software, 2010. The Grid 2, an all-in-one package

for communication and access. Cited in 2010/07/01:

http://www.sensorysoftware.com/thegrid2.html.

UNESCO, 1994. The Salamanca Statement and

Framework for Action on Special Needs Education,

UNESCO (ED-94/WS/18).

Unger, R., Chandler, C., 2009. A Project Guide to UX

Design: For user experience designers in the field or

in the making, New Riders Press.

HEALTHINF 2011 - International Conference on Health Informatics

586