School Simulator Aplicație de Instruire Preșcolară by Xinyue Liu, Huicong Hu and Shumeng Hou

School Simulator Aplicație de Instruire Preșcolară by Xinyue Liu, Huicong Hu and Shumeng Hou is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2022 A' Design Award de Bronz in Educație Competition Category.

BronzEducație· 2022

School Simulator Aplicație de Instruire Preșcolară

by Xinyue Liu, Huicong Hu and Shumeng Hou

Client: Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen

A' Design Award de Bronz Winner in Educație Category

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View at A' Design Award Press Release Award Badge

Colors

The Design

About School Simulator Aplicație de Instruire Preșcolară

Simulatorul de Școală este o aplicație mobilă concepută pentru a sprijini instruirea preșcolară a copiilor cu tulburări din spectrul autist. Aplicația este destinată părinților, profesorilor și terapeuților. Lecțiile de instruire acoperă patru categorii: îngrijire personală, înțelegerea instrucțiunilor, interacțiune interpersonală și o zi la școală. Copiii fac alegeri, vorbesc cu personaje de desene animate și exprimă expresii faciale, iar tehnologia de recunoaștere oferă feedback imediat. Răspunsurile incorecte sunt înregistrate și repetate până la corectare. O secțiune de comunitate le permite adulților să își împărtășească experiențele.

The Recognition

About the A' Design Award de Bronz

School Simulator Aplicație de Instruire Preșcolară a câștigat A' Design Award de Bronz, o recunoaștere extrem de prestigioasă acordată designurilor remarcabile care se disting prin creativitate, ingeniozitate și istețime. Câștigătorii Bronzului sunt artefacte din plin pricepute și izbitor de creative, care atestă experiența vastă, imaginația și resursele designerilor lor. Se așteaptă ca School Simulator Aplicație de Instruire Preșcolară să fie un obiect foarte apreciat, admirat și prețuit, remarcabil de profesionist și inovator. Acest design câștigător al A' Design Award de Bronz încorporează cele mai bune practici din artă, știință, design și tehnologie și este excelent prin atenția la detalii. School Simulator Aplicație de Instruire Preșcolară satisface splendid nevoile, atinge dorințele, vrăjește sentimentele și stârnește curiozitatea.

Behind the Design

Press Kit

Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.

Unique Properties: School Simulator is an app aiming at supporting parents, teachers and therapists to give preschool training of children with autism spectrum disorder. It mainly contains two parts: preschool training and community communication. Autistic children can get trained in four categories, self care, instruction understanding, interpersonal interaction, and one day in school, which are expected helpful for their future integration into inclusive classes.
Dimensions & Packaging: Designed for iOS system
Tags: Interface Design, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Speech and Gesture, Pre-school Training
Production Technology: Desk research, field studies, focus group interviews, consumer journey map, and collage activities were conducted for the demand analysis part. Figma, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator were used for the interfaces and interaction design in the project realization.
Design Challenge: The design activity met two challenges: the integration of various training needs, and the design of training lessons. First, though all target autistic children, each of them met different problems in daily life, requiring the variety of content and intensity. Therefore, on the basis of four general training categories, various lessons are provided for users to choose accordingly. Second, since these young children can hardly concentrate for a long period, lessons must be succinct in content, interesting in form, and filled with interactive practice, therefore enhancing the training effectiveness.
Research: We first conducted a desk research, gathering preliminary information towards the autistic children and their common problems in the inclusive education. Second, through a field study, we recorded these children’s emotional problems and behavioral disorders, and observed some intervention methods used. Third, in depth interviews were conducted with experts in autistic research, which made our design focus on the preschool training. Fourth, we made the one-day journey map of a primary school student, exploring various context autistic children may have trouble in, therefore guided the design of training lessons. Finally, we recruited preschool autistic children and collected their preference of colors and cartoon characters via collage activity, used as the reference in the interfaces and characters design. The interfaces and training lessons were constantly iterated in the later evaluations.
Inspiration: School Simulator was inspired by the special needs of autistic children in the inclusive education. In an inclusive school, these children can sit in the same classrooms and join learning activities together with their typically developing peers. However, due to the disorder of emotion and social behavior, it always takes them longer time to get used to the schedule and environment around. We realized the meaningful effects of preschool training for the autistic children.
Project Duration: The project started in October 2021 and finished in January 2022 in Shenzhen.
Operation Flow: Once the app is launched, users can freely choose training lessons for their children, or communicate with others. In each training lesson, children are encouraged to make choices, talk to cartoon characters, and show specified facial expressions based on the context or cues. The built-in algorithms of speech recognition and facial expression recognition can provide quick and accurate feedback to their responses. Once a wrong response is detected, the corresponding training part will be automatically recorded while encouraging the child to redo it till correct. In addition, users can view the training history with accuracy records and make notes at any time.
Team Members: Student: Xinyue Liu
Faculties: Huicong Hu
Shumeng Hou