Immersive AAC Scenes for Context-Aware Symbol Navigation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional AAC technology has a steep learning curve and can be frustrating for users, particularly children, due to the difficulty in navigating grid-based systems, leading to a loss of motivation and hindered communication and social development.
Innovation Solution
An interactive environment with immersive and context-aware augmentative communication technology that uses visualizations of real-world contexts, allowing users to select items and expressions within scenes to construct communications, incorporating gamification elements like avatars and rewards to enhance user engagement and motivation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If conventional grid-based AAC technology is used, then communication functionality is provided, but the learning curve is steep and user motivation is lost due to difficulty in navigation
Solution Approach 1:
The communication interface is segmented into multiple virtual rooms, each representing a different context or category (e.g., home, school, playground). Users navigate through these rooms to access relevant symbols, breaking down the overwhelming grid into manageable, context-specific sections that reduce cognitive load and improve ease of operation.
Solution Approach 2:
The system transitions from a traditional two-dimensional grid layout to a three-dimensional virtual environment with multiple rooms and levels. This dimensional change allows users to navigate through spaces rather than searching across a flat grid, making the interface more intuitive and engaging while reducing the perceived complexity.
2Adaptability or versatility
If grid-based systems with multiple symbols are used, then speech coverage is expanded, but navigation difficulty increases leading to frustration
Solution Approach 1:
Symbols are segmented and organized into context-specific virtual rooms (e.g., kitchen room for food-related symbols, bedroom room for personal care symbols). This segmentation maintains comprehensive speech coverage by including diverse symbols while improving navigation ease by presenting only relevant symbols in each context, reducing the number of symbols users need to search through at any given time.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary organization of symbols into context-appropriate rooms based on the user's current environment or activity. Before the user needs to communicate, symbols are pre-sorted and displayed in relevant virtual spaces, eliminating the need for users to navigate through unrelated symbols and making the system both versatile and easy to use.
3Ease of operation
If traditional AAC interfaces are used, then communication support is provided, but user engagement and motivation decrease
Solution Approach 1:
The interface evolves from a flat, traditional AAC display to an immersive three-dimensional virtual world with avatars, animated characters, and interactive environments. This dimensional transformation dramatically improves user engagement by making communication feel like play and exploration, while the structured virtual architecture manages the complexity to ensure the interface remains usable.
Solution Approach 2:
The system incorporates automated features such as context-aware symbol recommendation, automatic sentence construction, and adaptive difficulty adjustment that reduce the burden on users. These self-service mechanisms handle complex processing in the background while presenting simple, engaging interactions to the user, improving engagement without requiring the user to manage the complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
A device includes a processor, a display, an input component, and a memory. The memory includes instructions that cause the device to display a primary scene comprising a selectable model, display a secondary scene representative of the selectable model and comprising a selectable item, display an expression linguistically associated with the selectable item, and output a sentence including linguistic representations of the expression and the selectable item.