Starting Research in Interaction Design with Visuals for Low Functioning PAS Children

On starting to think about interaction design for low functioning Persons in the Autistic Spectrum (PAS), especially children, one finds a number of questions that are difficult to answer: Can we typify the PAS user? Can we engage the user in interactive communication without generating frustrating or obsessive situations? What sort of visual stimuli can we provide? Will they prefer representational or abstract visual stimuli? Will they understand 3D graphics representation? What sort of interfaces will they accept? Can we set ambitious goals such as education or therapy? Unfortunately, most of these questions have no answer yet. Hence, we decided to set an apparently simple goal: to design a “fun application”, with no intention to reach, yet, education or therapy. This goal was to be attained by giving the users a sense of agency, by providing first a sense of control in the interaction dialogue. Our approach to visual stimuli design has been based on the use of geometric, abstract, 2D, real-time computer graphics in a full-body, non-invasive, interactive space. The results obtained within the European funded project MEDIATE have been extremely encouraging.