Developing talna: A numeracy learning application for children with autism

Abstract

There is a growing trend in the academic research area in designing innovative interactive technologies based interventions for children with autism. This technology could be a unique platform for facilitating and encourage the learning process environment of children with autism. This paper presents and discusses the design and development techniques of touchscreen-assistive learning numeracy application (TaLNA). The TaLNA project aims to create an environment that scaffolds the learning process development of children with autism. Series of related work are reviewed, where children with autism have been included in the design process, and series of design activity implemented in TaLNA are described. TaLNA consist of three topics section 1) learn and discover the numbers 2) tracing numbers by using dots images and 3) learn and solve the addition arithmetic problem. Embedded with multicoloured, animated and interactive learning will feasibly keep the autism children engaged. It is an aspiration that TaLNA could uplift the instructional learning environment for children with autism, which could avail boost in early childcare education (ECCE) and thus foster the quality of life for children with autism.

Full text

DEVELOPING TaLNA: A NUMERACY LEARNING APPLICATION FOR
CHILDREN WITH AUTISM
Muhamad Fairus Kamaruzaman1, Harrinni Md Noor2, Mustaffa Halabi Haji Azahari3
1 Formgiving Design Research Group, Faculty of Art & Design, Universiti Teknologi MARA,
40450 Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
2 Faculty of Education, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 42300 Puncak Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
3 Faculty of Art & Design, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 42300 Puncak Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
muhamadfairus@salam.uitm.edu.my, harrinni@salam.uitm.edu.my, mustaffa@salam.uitm.edu.my
ABSTRACT
There is a growing trend in the academic research area in designing innovative interactive technologies
based interventions for children with autism. This technology could be a unique platform for
facilitating and encourage the learning process environment of children with autism. This paper
presents and discusses the design and development techniques of touchscreen-assistive learning
numeracy application (TaLNA). The TaLNA project aims to create an environment that scaffolds the
learning process development of children with autism. Series of related work are reviewed, where
children with autism have been included in the design process, and series of design activity
implemented in TaLNA are described. TaLNA consist of three topics section 1) learn and discover the
numbers 2) tracing numbers by using dots images and 3) learn and solve the addition arithmetic
problem. Embedded with multicoloured, animated and interactive learning will feasibly keep the
autism children engaged. It is an aspiration that TaLNA could uplift the instructional learning
environment for children with autism, which could avail boost in early childcare education (ECCE) and
thus foster the quality of life for children with autism.
Keywords - Children with Autism, Tablet Technology, Learning Process
INTRODUCTION
Touchscreen-assistive learning numeracy application (TaLNA) was developed as a supporting tool in
teaching basic numeracy and counting skills to children with autism. As counting skill is a basic skill
for each to live an independent life, thus, it is vitally important for children with autism, too, to master
this skill to promote an inclusive future proposed by the Malaysian government towards Vision 2020.
Individual with autism possesses different cognitive abilities compared to typically developing the
individual. Autism individual experiences delays throughout their development and faces problems in
numerous skills that are normally very essential for other typical individuals to go through their daily
life. The cognitive abilities of individual with autism are often very slow in progress. These individuals
are very well known with the deficit of three different cognitive abilities, which are social skills,
communication skills and limited imagination (Hasnah Toran, 2013), although each may show
diversified symptoms. Because of its varied symptoms and causes of autism, clinical cure has yet to
found. Despite all that, symptoms of a child with autism may be reduced through non-clinical methods
such as special education. Educational methods designed specifically for individual with autism is a
growing research area. Through the special education, visual support plays a significant role in
communications, instructions and engagements of the students. This kind of method encourages the
children to become more self-reliance as well as increasing their self-determination. When it comes to
special education, Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) is the method design that was most talked about.
As it has been academically established, it has become one of the most trusted methods to benefit not
just student with autism, but also other students with or without special needs. One of the structured
teaching methods that are making use of ABA is Treatment and Education of Autistic and related
Communication-handicapped Children (TEACCH) program (Rao & Gagie, 2006).
Nowadays, there are a lot of computer software and mobile application developers try to embed the
conventional special education method into digital mediums. However, to embed these methods into
digital devices means new medium(s) is/are involved. Conventional methods that were established to
be effective were found effective when the methods were used conventionally. Thus, when a new
platform takes place, a whole new academic proof is needed to establish whether this method may still
be effective for the users. Digital devices such as computers and tablets were undoubtedly created to
make life easier. As the mobile technology industry grows to a whole new level every time a new
model of variety kinds of devices were developed, the content developments were also catching up to
live up to the standard. The importance of such devices has also expanded to new target consumers. It
has not only become a necessary assistive tool in an everyday basis, but its role has become significant

to assist not just typical individual, but also individual with special needs. Besides, it has also been
reported that a lot of children with autism were immersed with visually based media and had more
tendency to learn through this kind of media such as computer (M. Kamaruzaman & Azahari, 2014; M.
Kamaruzaman, Rahman, Abdullah, & Anwar, 2013; Nally, Houlton, & Ralph, 2000). TaLNA is not
meant to replace the existing conventional method, but to support and assist the process of teaching and
to learn to keep the children with autism engaged in the learning process. In designing TaLNA, certain
guidelines were considered to suit the preferences and to encourage interactions with the students with
autism in the learning process. Designed based on the concept of ABA intervention, this application
compels positive fortifications for every correct response. It is built as a platform for parents,
educators, and caregivers to help the children to learn, discover as well as developing their skill to
achieve self-determination. This paper will discuss further in the design process of TaLNA.
REVIEW OF RELATED RESEARCHES
Due to the instantaneous development of mobile technology, great deals of researches were made
concerning human-computer interaction (HCI). These studies were made not only to typical users of
the mobile technology but also to individuals with special needs such as autism. Over the past few
years, scholars, scientists and developers have collaborated to develop computer software and mobile
applications to aid the learning and development of children with autism (Chien et al., 2015; Hourcade,
Bullock-Rest, & Hansen, 2012; M. F. Kamaruzaman, Rani, Nor, & Azahari, 2016; Pavlov, 2014). It
has been widely agreed that user interface (UI) design is an important part in HCI as it may indicate the
effectiveness of the developed software or application (Pavlov, 2014). Effective UI design allows the
end user to perform tasks as well as encouraging effortless, unrefined, and irresistible interaction
between the user and the system. Individual with autism were often blessed with fairly distinct visual
processing ability as they were often referred to as visual thinkers (Frauenberger, Good, & Alcorn,
2012). A lot of researchers have found that children with autism showed better reaction through visual
compared to other sensory (Hayes et al., 2010; McKone et al., 2010; Milley & Machalicek, 2012).
Interactive visuals were also said to be highly useful to support the learning process of children with
autism. With the use of mobile technology as self-instructor, there is a good possibility that children
with autism may acquire an admirable level of self-determination thus, made self-managing personal
task possible. Mobile devices such as tablets are examples of devices with eminent Computer Assisted
Instruction (CAI) with appropriate software. Devices of this sort make it feasible for individual with
autism who possesses severe speech impairment to express their needs (M. Kamaruzaman & Azahari,
2014; Mejia-Figueroa & Juárez-Ramírez, 2014; Nurdalilah Mohd Rani, Siti Humaira Ramli, Rafeah
Legino, Mustaffa Halabi Haji Azahari, Muhamad Fairus Kamaruzaman (2016);Torii, Ohtani,
Shirahama, Niwa, & Ishii, 2012) It is necessary to follow certain established guidelines while
designing applications for autism users. UI have a strong relationship to its demographic of target users
and users with autism are target groups that are atypical as they may have a different worldview than
the researchers and designers. In designing UI, an attempt to complexity reduction of software or
application is crucial to make the product easy to use, systematic as well as enjoyable to work with
(Darejeh & Singh, 2013). Therefore, it is the utmost important for software or applications to be
developed grounded by the users’ cognitive ability, in this case, children with autism. Hence, TaLNA
was designed to comply with the need of children with autism as supporting material in learning basic
numeracy and developing counting skill.
DESIGN PROCESS AND PRINCIPLES
The design of TaLNA had undergone nine stages of design process. These processes were crucial to
establishing proper guideline for the UI design of the application. In order to design the interface,
layout and content of the application, it is noted that minimalism expects need to be emphases for the
ease of children with autism to digest all the information. All tasks were chosen early in the design
effort, which then is used to raise issues concerning the design so design decisions may be made as
well as to evaluate the design as it is being developed (Abras, Maloney-Krichmar, & Preece, 2004;
Muhamad Fairus Kamaruzaman, Harrinni Md Nor, Mustaffa Halabi Haji Azahari. (2016); Lewis &
Rieman, 1993). According to M. F. Kamaruzaman et al. (2016), the design processes involves:
1. Task user analysis
2. Choose representative tasks
3. Find Existing Interfaces
4. Rough Out the Design
5. Analyse User Interaction
6. Create Prototype

7. Test Design to Users
8. Iterate
9. Build the Design
Through the mentioned processes, TaLNA’s architecture was designed after various discussions and
careful considerations with the autism experts. TaLNA consists of three major activity stages consist of
recognising the number, identify the number, and number calculation. Each stage was separated into
two sections. The two sections under the recognising number and identify number are both separated
into ‘1-5’ and ‘6-10’. Meanwhile, the two sections under number calculation involve ‘plus’ and
‘minus’. Activities under identifying number involve ‘connecting the dots’. Five important principles
to design the UI was involved in designing TaLNA. These five principles were necessary to design an
application that would be suitable for its target user, in this case, children with autism. The five
principles involve were (M. F. Kamaruzaman et al., 2016; Lewis & Rieman, 1993).
1. Clustering Principle - organising the screen into visually separate blocks of similar controls.
2. Visibility Reflects Usefulness Principles - makes frequently used controls visible for the
users to access and hide the less frequent controls.
3. Intelligent Consistency Principle - encourages using the similar screen for similar functions.
4. Colour as a Supplement Principle - supplementary to emphasise information through other
means.
5. Reduced Clutter Principle - as simple as possible without leaving out attractive touch to it.
FORMING THE TALNA DESIGN
TaLNA was built using Adobe Flash CS5.5 with action script 3.0 in app.xml format. The script target
setting used the template setting of AIR for Android 3.2. Thus any mobile device with Adobe AIR will
be able to play this application. Figure 1 shows the general settings of AIR for Android 3.2 to build this
application. Standard screen size to build an application for Android was used as per set by the AIR for
Android 3.2 template, which is either 480 x 800 for portrait view or 800 x 480 for landscape view. For
TaLNA, the screen size was set to 800 x 480 for landscape viewing.
Figure 1: General setting of AIR for Android 3.2 in building TaLNA
The TaLNA design structure building started by building the homepage. Upon entering the homepage,
the user will be greeted with cheery background music to draw the attention of young target users
towards the application. The homepage consists of five functional buttons. These buttons include three
activity buttons, one information button and one exit button. The three activity buttons are
‘Recognising’, ‘Identify’ and ‘Calculation’. The three activity buttons and information button navigate
the user to a different page. The homepage building is as shown in Figure 2

Figure 2: Building the homepage
The first activity button leads to and activity called recognising numbers. In this level, user has to listen
to the voice over that says the number in word and the user is required to repeat after the voice over.
This level teaches the user to recognise the number and learn how to pronounce the basic numbers.
Recognising numbers activity contain ten linear page flows that teaches number one to number ten.
Starting from page one, there are two navigating buttons. One button navigates to the homepage, and
the other one navigates the next page. Meanwhile, there are three navigating buttons from page two
until page nine. One button navigates to the homepage, one navigates to the previous page, and the
other one navigates to the next page. Lastly, there are two navigating buttons in page ten that consist of
one button to the homepage and one button to the previous. Each of the ten pages was divided into two
sections. Instruction section was placed on the right side of the page followed by learning section on
the left side of the page as shown in Figure 3. The learning section consists of the number in Arabic
form, the picture example of the quantity on the left of the number, and the spelling of the number in
roman writing below them.
Figure 3: Recognising number page 1 and page 10
The second activity button navigates to an activity called identifying numbers. In this page, the user
will learn to identify the numbers while playing one puzzle of each number. Once the user chooses one
number on the activity screen as shown in Figure 4, the user will be lead to the puzzle page. The puzzle
is called connecting the dots, as the user has to connect all dots to form the number. The user will have
to connect the dots following the sequence of the small number on each dot as shown in Figure 5 to
form the number.

Figure 4: Identify activity’s main page where user will have to choose a number to play the puzzle
Figure 5: Puzzle page where the user will have to connect the dots in sequence based on the number
shown on each dot to form the one whole shape of a number
The third activity, calculation, was divided by two sections, which are plus, and minus operations as
shown in Figure 6. In this page, there are three navigating buttons consist of homepage button, plus
operation button and minus operation button. In each of plus and minus operation button, there are ten
linear calculation quiz pages with different level of difficulties. The plus and minus operation pages are
as shown in Figure 7. Each quiz answered with a correct answer will be navigated to the praising page
as shown in Figure 8 and will be able to advance to the next question. For questions that are answered
wrongly will be navigated to inducement page The praising page is necessary as a form of award
system that is normally used in autism’s conventional education method as recommended in ABA.
Reward system increases the student’s determination in completing a task in the correct manner. The
student will attempt to answer the same question again afterwards.
Figure 6: Calculation page
Figure 7: Plus, and minus page

Figure 8: Praising page appears when the question is answered correctly
TALNA PARTICIPATORY DESIGN DEVELOPMENT
After TaLNA had been built, it was tested to users with autism to analyse their interaction with the
application’s design. In gathering data for the analysis, a participatory approach was used to gain a
better understanding of requirements, to build realistic expectations for target groups, and to empower
marginalised groups (Frauenberger et al., 2012). Two types of participatory design involve
participation via proxy and full participation. While participation via proxy involves people with
intimate knowledge of the students such as parents, caretakers and teachers, full participation directly
involve children with autism (Frauenberger et al., 2012). Using full participatory research design, this
paper reports the involvement of teacher and caretaker as well as children with autism in the
application’s development, which allows them to have a direct impact on the outcome. With the
cooperation of Sri Muda Primary School, Shah Alam, Puncak Alam Primary School, Autism Centre,
Rawang and Autism Lab, Faculty of Education, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). 6 teachers
and 2 caretakers were involved in this investigation which to determine TaLNA apps practicality and
functionality including the user experience (UX). This is vital to ensure the apps can be use and utilise
by the children with autism. This data can be view in Table 1. For full participatory design
development, 15 children with mild autism from Autism Lab, UKM has been participated in this
experiment. The result from Table 2, shows the engagement of children with autism towards the
application. The participatory investigation also looks on the smooth browsing and the acceptance of
the layout and interface by the children with autism. According to the result shown in Table 2, only two
of the students were not engaged to the application, while the rest of the children were very engaged.
The two students, who were not engaged, were both able interact with the first activity just as fine as
the other students. However, both of them fall apart to interact with the second and third activity. This
is due to the sense of fatigue (Alias, 2014). The overall result of the experiment shows that almost all
of the students managed to interact and engage in all three numeracy activities in the application. The
engagement of the students was observed from the aspect of colour scheme as well as layout and
interface design of the application. The result indicates that, so far, the design of TaLNA is user-
friendly and practical for the use of students with autism.
Table 1. Teacher and caretaker respond towards TaLNA apps
Number of
Teacher /
Caregiver
Centre / School
Teacher /
caregiver
respond
towards
the
TaLNA
apps
Not Engaged
Neutral
Very Engaged
Teacher / Caretaker
participatory on TaLNA
apps development.
1. User Experiment
2. Apps practicality
3. Apps
Functionality
Activity 1
Activity 2
Activity 3
Teacher 1
SK Sri Muda, Shah
Alam
Yes
√
Very Engaged
√
√
√
Teacher 2
SK Sri Muda, Shah
Alam
Yes
√
Very Engaged
√
√
√
Teacher 3
SK Puncak Alam
Yes
√
Very Engaged
√
√
√
Teacher 4
SK Puncak Alam
Yes
√
Very Engaged
√
√
√
Teacher 5
Autism Centre,
Rawang
Yes
√
Very Engaged
√
√
√
Teacher 6
Autism Lab, UKM
Yes
√
Very Engaged
√
√
√

Table 2. Children with autism level of engagement towards the TaLNA application
CONCLUSION
This paper discussed the building of TaLNA design and its direct impact on engagement towards the
target group. TaLNA was designed based on five principles that include Clustering, Visibility Reflects
Usefulness, Intelligent Consistency, Colour as a Supplement, and Reduced Clutter. These principles are
the key foundation in designing multimedia content for children with autism or children with
disabilities with the traits closely similar to children with autism. Using Adobe AIR setting for Android
3.2, TaLNA was designed suitable to be used in Android mobile device so long it has Adobe AIR
installed in it. In this research, TaLNA was installed in Samsung Galaxy Tab 4, and its functionality
was tested before the actual experiment was conducted towards the students. After making sure that the
application works well, the engagement experiment took place to observe interactions of students with
autism towards TaLNA. The result shown from the experiment indicated that most students did not
have any problem operating the application. Most students also seemed to be very engaged in the
application as 13 out of 15 managed to complete all three numeracy activities in the application. In
Caretaker 1
Autism Centre,
Rawang
Yes
√
Very Engaged
√
√
√
Caretaker 2
Autism UKM Lab,
Selangor.
Yes
√
Very Engaged
√
√
√
Number of
Children
with ASD
School
Children
with ASD,
behaviour
respond
towards the
touchscreen
apps
Not Engaged
Neutral
Very Engaged
Participatory on
TaLNA application
development.
1. Colour Scheme
2. Layout & Interface
(user-friendly)
(practicality)
Activity 1
Activity 2
Activity 3
ASD
Children 1
Autism
UKM
Lab,
Bangi.
Yes
√
Very Engaged
√
√
√
ASD
Children 2
Yes
√
Not Engaged
√
x
x
ASD
Children 3
Yes
√
Very Engaged
√
√
√
ASD
Children 4
Yes
√
Very Engaged
√
√
√
ASD
Children 5
Yes
√
Very Engaged
√
√
√
ASD
Children 6
Yes
√
Very Engaged
√
√
√
ASD
Children 7
Yes
√
Very Engaged
√
√
√
ASD
Children 8
Yes
√
Very Engaged
√
√
√
ASD
Children 9
Yes
√
Very Engaged
√
√
√
ASD
Children 10
Yes
√
Very Engaged
√
√
√
ASD
Children 11
Yes
√
Very Engaged
√
√
√
ASD
Children 12
Yes
√
Very Engaged
√
√
√
ASD
Children 13
Yes
√
Very Engaged
√
√
√
ASD
Children 14
Yes
√
Not Engaged
√
x
x
ASD
Children 15
Yes
√
Very Engaged
√
√
√

conclusion, the creation of TaLNA apps design is on the right track which it may be used as a
supporting medium in encouraging students with autism in engaging with mathematical lessons.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This research was approved by the local Research Ethics Committee, UiTM and Ministry of Education,
Malaysia. This project was funded by Ministry of Higher Learning, Malaysia under the Research
Acculturation Grant Scheme. The authors also would like to thank Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia,
Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia (UiTM) and Research Management Centre, UiTM for the
administrative support.
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