Robots for Inclusive Play: Co-designing an Educational Game With Visually Impaired and sighted Children

Abstract

Despite being included in mainstream schools, visually impaired children still face barriers to social engagement and participation. Games could potentially help, but games that cater for both visually impaired and sighted players are scarce. We used a co-design approach to design and evaluate a robotbased educational game that could be inclusive of both visually impaired and sighted children in the context of mainstream education. We ran a focus group discussion with visual impairment educators to understand barriers to inclusive play. And then a series of co-design workshops to engage visually impaired and sighted children and educators in learning about robot technology and exploring its potential to support inclusive play experiences. We present design guidelines and an evaluation workshop of a game prototype, demonstrating group dynamics conducive to collaborative learning experiences, including shared goal setting/execution, closely coupled division of labour, and interaction symmetry.

"If you've gone straight, now, you must turn left" - Exploring the use of a tangible interface in a collaborative treasure hunt for people with visual impairments

“…Depending on the interaction design, but also the age, the level of expertise of players and the educational aim, this kind of game can be adapted and address many use cases such as learning, resolution of problem or learn to collaborate with other peers. In accordance with [36,43], we think that it is possible to generalize our results and to design educational and collaborative games with commercial robots for being used in real settings.…”

“…In line with recent work [36,38,43], future work should address these assumptions and the development of a real-setting game.…”

“…Different robots were relevant for this type of experiment [36,38,43]. Among these robots, the Cellulo was the lightest with 168 g [41] when the others were about 800 to 900 g [43].…”

Engaging English Language Learners as Cultural Informants in the Design of a Social Robot for Education

“…In PD, the goal is not to just understand people in an effort to build systems for them, but rather to design co-operative and collaborative design relationships that can empower users and make practical or political improvements in people lives [65]. Within PD, the method of co-design has been found successful in robot design and interaction specifically design to support children [66] and teens [67], in educational settings [68], and including vulnerable children [69,70].…”

A synthesis of systematic review research on emerging learning environments and technologies

“…It also is derived, in part, from the lessened risk associated with trying an app that often costs less than five dollars in comparison to the many dedicated cognitive support tools that have abandonment rates that exceed 35% (Dawe 2006). The most recent explorations into the uses of new technology for special needs children have considered how to support socio-collaborative learning approaches (Baykal et al 2020) and the creation of robots who can support inclusive play (Metatla et al 2020).…”