Digital Picture Schedule: An Everyday Activity sharing Tool for parents of Children with Autism

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) effects communication and social interaction. Parents are responsible for socializing their children and face hurdles when their children are on the autism spectrum. An important aspect of the communication between parent and child is discussing the activities the child performed while in school or daycare. Since picture based learning aids are used in elementary school classrooms for both neurotypical children and children with developmental disabilities we believe there is an opportunity to leverage the use with computing technology capabilities to assist in the communicative relationship between parents and children. Through interviews and focus groups, we have confirmed the need for a communication tool that allows parents to visualize the child’s daily activities outside of the home to prompt the child to engage in conversations about what they did that day. We discuss the design alternatives we considered, and ideas for future work in this domain. General Terms Design, Human Factors, Performance, Experimentation