Design to support interpersonal communication in the special educational needs classroom

Abstract

This paper describes our Experience-centered Design (ECD) inquiry into the current and potential role of digital photography to support interpersonal communication and expression in a class at a mixed special education needs school. Presented as a case study, we describe five classroom-based Creative Photography workshops that engaged pupils with a broad range of complex special needs, along with classroom staff. We further describe how, from these workshops, we generated a set of qualitative considerations for the design of digital photographic tools to support interpersonal communication and expression in this setting. Additionally, we present the preliminary evaluation of a photo-sorting tool that we developed in response. Our case study demonstrates how an ECD approach can guide an interaction design process in a special education needs setting, supporting interaction designers in understanding and responding pragmatically to the complex and dynamic interactions at play between the stakeholders.

Widening participation in technology design: A review of the involvement of children with special educational needs and disabilities

“…Experience-centred design (ECD) is a further design approach that shares some values with PD and has been used to involve children in technology design (Durrant et al, 2013), emphasizing the fostering of "empathy and aesthetic engagement between stakeholders". It differs from PD in that it allows the designer to design for a particular community based on this engagement (Durrant et al, 2013) whilst still providing users with a voice within the design process.…”

Interpersonal expression in the special educational needs classroom: An experience-centred design case study

“…Our findings are partly documented elsewhere [10]; herein, we consolidate our insights and inspirations into a summary that addresses our aims to explore, firstly, the potential social value of photography as a means for interpersonal communication in this SEND context to demonstrate, secondly the methodological value of conducting ECD for studying SEND.…”

“…We now turn to describe our study, working with staff and pupils at a UK SEND school, which begun with a series of 'Creative Photography' workshops to understand the design space of our interests. This workshop series was the first of many linked design studies with this school, forming a longitudinal empirical engagement that has been documented in part elsewhere [10] and continues to date.…”

“…In this section we summarise our workshop procedure, which evolved as we gained experience of the setting in dialogue with our participants. Further detail about this procedure is documented elsewhere [10].…”

The department of hidden stories

“…Furthermore, they would restrict the real estate of the canvas, which the children most appreciated. Instead, we might consider ways of providing new prompts in games like DoHS where the expressivity of photography for children [9] is harnessed further. We might imagine additional elements of the app that support the child in constructing their documentation of the story in creative and expressive ways-such as only revealing one part of their story, or providing hints to someone who discovered their story as to where the next part of their story may lie.…”