Overview
Topic status: We're looking for students to study this topic.
Project Summary
Childhood inattention has been linked with poor academic outcomes and reduced social inclusion. In children with developmental disabilities improving poor attention skills is essential. Attention is often most successfully developed around high motivation activities and interests or fun games.
This project involves designing a rewarding activity or game suitable for a child with developmental disabilities with an educational component that includes some way to measure attention.
Attention might be measured through tracking inputs to the game, through some form of eye-tracking or gesture tracking, or through brain signal tracking using a sensor such as the neurosky. Technologies such as iPad or Kinect might be employed. The measurement should be able to distinguish between focused attention versus repetitive self-stimulus acts such as simply banging the keyboard that do not indicate true attention to the activity at hand.
Expected outcomes, applications and/or benefits
- Establish a theoretical understanding of interaction design for attention development
- Develop an exemplar prototype to support kids with attention disorders to engage and learn;
- Create methodological insights into how to build such systems in a participatory way and to suggest design processes and tools that might support a robust and human-centered design approach.
Required student skills/experience
The student needs a background in Computer Science/ Information Technology/Engineering/Maths or Design, the ability to write clearly, and an interest/experience in technology development and ethnographic research. An interest in learning human-centred research methods and human-computer interaction research approaches is needed. Please contact me if you would like to discuss further.
- Study level
- Vacation research experience scholarship
- Supervisors
- QUT
- Organisational unit
Science and Engineering Faculty
- Research area
- Keywords
- game, educational, tracking
- Contact
- Contact the supervisor for more information
Professor Margot Brereton
Professor Laurie Buys
