A User-Centred Design Framework for the Development of Speech and Language Therapeutic Toys

Abstract

Therapy in early childhood is facilitated through toys and play. While mainstream toys are designed for children, therapeutic toys need to satisfy requirements from clinicians, caregivers, and children. The study presented in this paper investigated the challenges that 22 international toy designers encounter during the design process and whether support is required when developing products for speech and language therapy, through a mixed-method approach. Results show that considerable challenges are encountered during the early design stages. Nonetheless, the toy design process remains unsupported, while no support is available for designers to consider therapeutic needs. Based on the feedback received, eleven requirements were identified upon which a user-centred design support framework was proposed to assist toy designers during the task clarification stage, taking into account the affordances that therapeutic toys should have without inhibiting the creative process.

Evaluation of an Affordance-Based Requirements Generation Tool for Speech And Language Therapeutic Toys

“…ACQUAINT-SALTT provides a means by which the D-SALTT framework can be evaluated. The requirements for this tool stem from the original requirements of the framework (Balzan et al, 2021), coupled with the modus operandi of toy designers and the aspects of software usability that enhance the user's experience while interacting with software. The level of implementation of the tool when compared to the D-SALTT framework is extensive with the omission of a module that is not the focus of this study.…”

“…Within this context, these end-users are considered as the customer. In order to achieve this aim, the design research methodologies proposed by (Blessing and Chakrabarti, 2009b) and (Duffy and O'Donnell, 1998) were adopted to carry out the entire research, where the identified phenomena described in a descriptive study (DS1) (Balzan et al, 2021) were translated into a knowledge-based model consisting of a framework and a taxonomy of key elements for the design of SALTTs. The knowledge model was used to develop a computer model, in the form of a computer-based requirements generation tool for SALTT.…”

“…At the core lies the Stakeholders Layer consisting of the end-users and the relevant product development stakeholders, whose needs will (directly or indirectly) pass to the designer (Step 1) as a design brief. Sometimes, this initial list of needs (design brief) is not readily available or is not exhaustive enough for the designer to understand it(Balzan et al, 2021). The front end of the computer-model, represented by the User-Interface Layer, will allow the designer to input (Step 2) the customers' needs and identify new requirements for the product being designed.…”

“…Figure 1. A high-level representation of the Speech and Language Therapy Potential ModelFigure2shows a high-level representation of the D-SALTT framework presented in(Balzan et al, 2021), a framework intended to support designers during the Task Clarification stage to generate and understand the users' requirements. The D-SALTT framework consists of five layers.…”

Requirements elicitation in board game design for children with developmental language disorder (DLD)

“…A preliminary framework developed on the identified requirements is also presented. This work is a continuation of Balzan et al (2021), which sought to identify the needs of designers at the early design stages when developing physical therapeutic toys. The rest of this paper is organised as follows: Section 2 presents an overview of the related work in the field of SALTTs and game based therapy.…”