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A Conceptual Analysis of Difficult Situations –
developing systems for teenagers with ASD
Henrik Schärfe1, Peter Øhrstrøm1 and Miklos Gyori2
1 Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University.
{scharfe, poe}@hum.aau.dk
2 Department of Cognitive Psychology, ELTE University, Budapest, Hungary
research.gyori@gmail.com
Abstract. The project, HANDS (Helping Autism-diagnosed teenagers Navigate
and Develop Socially), studies how teenagers with ASD and with IQ within the
normal range (IQ > 70) can handle what they see as difficult situations using
mobile technology. HANDS is a project sponsored by the European
Commission as part of the 7th Framework Programme. It is the basic
hypothesis in HANDS that it is possible to improve quality of life for teenagers
with ASD by providing a mobile ICT toolset supporting them in many daily
situations. In this paper, it is argued that a careful conceptual analysis of the
idea of “handling difficult situations” can be very useful as a basis for
understanding the potential in a system supporting teenagers with ASD. It is
also argued that such a conceptual analysis can be based on a combinations of
i) psychological insights regarding teenagers with ASD, ii) so-called “usage
narratives” describing difficult situations for teenagers with ASD, and iii)
central ideas from temporal logic describing formally what it could mean to
handle a difficult situation. Furthermore, it is argued that the conceptual
analysis can be combined with ideas from so-called persuasive design (PD) in a
very straightforward manner. It is finally shown that this conceptual analysis
gives rise to a rather strong argument for certain specific system requirements
regarding the future HANDS toolset.
Keywords: conceptual analysis, ASD, branching time, usage narratives,
HANDS.
1 Introduction
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are lifelong neurodevelopment disorders. There is
extensive evidence that autism leads to social marginalization and isolation. Even
people in the high-functioning segment of ASD will often have difficulties with daily
life management and self-care, and they will have problems being a natural part of
everyday communicative transaction [9].
The project, HANDS (Helping Autism-diagnosed teenagers Navigate and Develop
Socially), studies how teenagers with ASD and with an IQ within the normal range
(IQ > 70) can handle what they see as difficult situations using mobile technology. It
is the basic hypothesis in the project that it is possible to improve the quality of life
for teenagers with ASD by providing a mobile ICT toolset supporting them in many
daily situations. The assumption is that it is possible to develop a toolset, which can
help improving their social skills and self-management skills, thereby ensuring social
integration and independence.
HANDS is a project sponsored by the European Commission as part of the 7th
Framework Programme, Theme 7.2, Accessible and Inclusive ICT. There are 10
partners in the project (3 universities, 4 schools for teenagers with a diagnosis of
autism spectrum disorder, and 3 software companies). The project is highly
interdisciplinary (psychology, pedagogic, computers science, information science).
For further information on the HANDS project see [4, 9, 10, 19, 25, 26].
The HANDS project strives to develop a set of software components based on
Persuasive Technology [5], which will be an efficient tool for the teenager with ASD
to improve social skills and self management skills, and to manage social activities.
The idea is that the teachers at the schools for teenagers with ASD using the toolset
should be able to design and customize individual tools for their students. These
individual tools should be implemented on mobile units (e.g. smart phones) which the
teenagers can consult whenever they find themselves in a difficult situation. The idea
is that the system implemented on the mobile unit should be interactive, and that the
application of it should promote user activity in certain situations. The tool will be an
example of what Fogg has defined as Persuasive Technology, since the ambition
clearly is an ”attempt to change attitudes or behavior or both (without using coercion
or deception)” [5]:15
Recently, requirements have been formulated for prototype 1 of the HANDS
toolset [4, 9, 25] based on conceptual considerations involving ideas from
psychology, pedagogic and persuasive design. The input to the formulation of these
requirements has been theoretical considerations in combination with a number of so-
called “usage narratives” [4] which describe various examples of difficult situations,
i.e. situations which are difficult to handle for the teenagers with ASD. In section 2,
we discuss some psychological perspectives of why certain situations are difficult to
handle for teenagers with ASD, and what sort of help the teenagers need in order to
handle the situation satisfactorily. In section 3 of this paper we focus on the use of
narratives as the empirical background for the conceptual work leading to formulation
of the requirements. In section 4, we suggest a formal and conceptual framework for
handling the difficult situations based on Ockhamistic temporal logic. Section 5 is a
discussion of how techniques from Persuasive Design can be utilized in the HANDS
project and what the HANDS toolset should include in order to be effective. Section 6
is a discussion of how a practical development of the Hands toolset fulfilling the
requirements can be carried out.
2 Why are certain situations difficult to handle for teenagers with
ASD? What sort help do they need?
Autism, and more broadly, autism spectrum disorders, are highly complex
neurocognitive developmental disorders, underlain by atypical development of the
brain at least from early infancy – in most cases from intra-uterine life. Atypical brain
development co-emerges with atypical psychological development, and these
manifest themselves in characteristic patterns of behavior, which form the basis of
diagnosis in current standards of psychiatric-psychological practice.
The behavioral manifestations of autism show striking variety in their surface
form, in their severity, in their developmental patterns, in the specific situations they
appear. Nevertheless, all individuals with ASD show symptoms, qualitative
impairments, in three areas of complex human behavior: social reciprocity,
communicative reciprocity, and flexible organization of behavior and interest [21].
As no known neurological, neuro-surgical or neuro-chemical treatments are
efficient in autism, evidence-based, up-to-date treatment is based on complex
psychological-pedagogical interventions [13]. As autism, with marginal exceptions, is
a life-long condition, the aim of these psychological-pedagogical intervention regimes
is not curing autism, but to increase the level of social adaptedness, communicative
skills, daily living skills, self-help skills, the person’s overall autonomy and
competence, and reduce maladaptive behaviors. HANDS project is based on the
principles of these pedagogical-psychological intervention regimes, and the HANDS
toolset can be seen as a set of new means to be applied in the context of these
regimes.
A key focus of the HANDS project is to help teenagers with ASD manage ‘difficult
situations’, situations which are hard to handle for them. As autism shows impressive
heterogeneity, it, of course, varies to a large extent from individual to individual
which specific situations fall into this category. And, moreover, there is within-
individual variability, too, concerning the situations which cause difficulties. A given
kind of situation (e.g.: to spend the break between classes in school with adequate
activities) may not cause difficulties in some circumstances (if, for example, the
teacher or a peer mentor pays attention to offer him/her some activity), while the same
kind of situation can lead to serious difficulties, and, consequently, to enormous stress
and challenging behaviors under other circumstances (if, for example, there is no
activity offered and a lot of children form a ‘chaotic’ social environment).
Nevertheless, on the one hand, we can make generalizations, as there are kinds of
situations which recurrently lead to difficulties. On the other hand, the set of
situations relevant for us here is delimited by the fact that HANDS project is aimed at
helping high functioning teenagers with ASD.
In our current understanding of autism, it is determined by its key
psychological/cognitive features, what kind of everyday situations individuals with
this disorder will find difficult to manage. People with ASD are characterized by a set
of psychological/cognitive anomalies, from among which we refer only to those
which seem especially relevant for us here.
It is well-documented that individuals with autism have an impaired ability to
understand others’ mental states (intentions, thoughts, complex emotions, etc.). This
ability, called naïve Theory of Mind ability, works in an automatic, intuitive fashion in
neurotypical persons, while in autism it may be missing or working in a significantly
less efficient and automatic way [8]. This leads to difficulties in situations where
understanding others’ actual thoughts and intentions is indispensable to manage the
situation.
Another cognitive ability deeply impaired in autism is the set of executive functions.
This heterogeneous set of more specific cognitive abilities is crucial in planning one’s
own actions, maintaining these plans and adapting them flexibly to changes in the
circumstances while executing them. In autism, evidence show difficulties in action
generation, in planning, in flexibility, in generalization, and occasionally in inhibition
of irrelevant responses – just to mention a few key aspects of executive functioning.
This set of impairments often leads to difficulties when novel, non-routine, and
complex situations are to be handled, or mobilization of routines is not sufficient in
itself [12].
Problems with actively finding and processing relevant input information in
various situations, unfortunately, contribute significantly to the above-outlined
difficulties. Autism (ASD) is widely characterized by weak central coherence, or
detail-focused information processing style. This means that their tendency to
integrate automatically the parts of incoming information into meaningful patterns in
a context sensitive way is weaker than in the general population. Moreover,
attentional processes show subtle but important deviations from those in neurotypical
individuals, and these also lead to atypical patterns and ways of picking up
information from various situations [11, 15].
And, finally, one must keep in mind that autism is a developmental disorder – so
not only these fundamental abilities are impaired, but several other more specific
skills that should have been built onto these, or should have been acquired by the aid
of these. So arise impaired insights about social norms, expectations, and routines; a
limited conceptual and procedural knowledge about social relationships, institutions,
and other concepts; as well as the impairment of behavioral routines and emotional
responses associated with them.
These rather deductive-theoretical inferences are in line with the more descriptive
clinical and pedagogical literature which is abundant in examples of such difficult
situations [17].
In sum, the following key (cognitive) sources of the rise of ‘difficult situations’
can be identified:
On the input side:
difficulties in grasping the relevant features of situations (especially, but not
only, social features),
difficulties in tracking flexibly the changes in the situations.
Representational-conceptual aspects:
difficulties in representing intentions of other actors in the situation,
difficulties in representing what is socially acceptable, as a goal and/or as an
action,
not having acquired a normal set of social routines,
difficulties in generalizing from one situation to another.
On the side of active agency:
difficulties in generating goals and plans,
difficulties in maintaining goals and plans,
difficulties in generating actions,
difficulties in executing plans, especially flexibly.
This list also implies that a lot of fundamental cognitive-psychological mechanisms
and abilities are not necessarily impaired in autism – such as conceptual thinking in
general, understanding causality in general, (formal aspects of) language, and so on.
Now, how and why it is relevant in the characterisation of difficult situations that
high functioning teenagers with autism are in the focus of the HANDS project? At
least the following points are relevant:
– difficult situations are most often not as elementary for them as for young children
with autism (there are no deep problems with elementary self-help skills, for
example);
– they have good language skills (apart from social aspects and pragmatics);
– they have considerable general world-knowledge;
– they are most often aware, to some extent, of their own difficulties;
– many of them are motivated to be socially effective and adapted – even if they miss
the cognitive tools for that;
– they are all motivated to be effectively acting agents.
(Also, it may be worth emphasizing that adolescence is a psychologically difficult and
‘stormy’ transitive period of life for most typically developing people, too. Most of
these ‘normal’ difficulties also arise for teenagers with autism, too.)
It is important to emphasise that high functioning teenagers with ASD have a strong
motivation to avoid the rise of ‘difficult situations’ and, if these arose, to handle them.
This is so partly, because (1) they are motivated, as neurotypical people are, to
experience themselves as effective agents, (2) partly, because they are motivated to
overcome their own difficulties, (3) partly, because they are, to some extent, sensitive
to the social feedback on their inadequate behaviours, and finally, (4) since the
frustration from the inability to solve certain situations is a negative emotion they are
motivated to avoid.
All this implies, and this is a crucial basis for the HANDS project, too, that
teenagers with autism have a strong motivation to be in control of their own actions
and their own environment. This is a natural human motivation (see, e.g., [23]),
characterizing all human beings from early infancy (see, e.g., [22]), often called
competence motivation. This is clearly present in autism, too – although, due to the
cognitive characteristics of this syndrome, children and adults with autism often
attempt to use non-conventional acts and means to control their environment and
actions. What complicates the issue, and makes the need for helping them in
managing difficult situations even more important, however, are two further factors.
First, due to their cognitive limitations, they fail to achieve competence, the feeling of
control, in significantly more situations than typically developing people do. Second,
these failures invoke significantly more stress and anxiety from high functioning
individuals (teenagers) than from typically developing people: partly, because they
have much more of these failures, and partly, because they have less insight on the
specific causes of these failures.
In sum, the emergence of situations difficult to manage is multiply determined in
teenagers with autism; although they are motivated to be effective agents efficiently
controlling their own actions and their environment, their complex and specific
cognitive limitations prevent them to do so to a normal extent. This leads to
considerable stress and anxiety, often to conflicts with social norms and expectations
and to challenging behaviors, and, not rarely, to victimization.
3 Difficult situations for teenagers with ASD presented by a set of
narratives
In all phases of the project leading up to the semi-formal sets of requirements,
scenarios and stories about how the software might be used, and what kinds of
situations it is meant to alleviate, has played a very important role. The use of such
scenarios has been an intricate part of software development for decades, and is
consistent with the choice of development strategies in the HANDS project, namely
Use Cases [3] and Scrum [18]. In this particular case, the use stories have proven
important for at least two reasons. In the first place, the highly interdisciplinary nature
of the project calls for a very high degree of sensitivity between experts from various
fields. Bringing academic traditions together obviously takes place through scientific
formats (books, research papers, and presentations) but small recurring narratives
have been instrumental in structuring discussions and triangulating meaning between
the different fields of expertise. In the second place, although the core ideas of the
project are very easy to communicate, it may still be difficult to foresee the actual
needs of teachers and students, and to envision how everyday tasks may be improved
and altered through the use of software. In order to provide a useful empirical input to
the formulation of the requirements a number of brief “narratives” have been
formulated. These narratives typically represent teacher experiences regarding
situations which are difficult to handle for the teenager with ASD studied in HANDS.
In the following, a few examples will be quoted:
[ex 1]: AA is allergic to particular kinds of food. He is already very careful
about what he can and cannot eat, but so far his mum has decided what to buy
and what to cook. AA would like to be able to go and buy his own food.
However, he is anxious about what he can, cannot or should buy. He gets
confused by the variety of products on the shelves in the supermarket, and he is
afraid of making a mistake. AA is very good with portable game consoles such
as Nintendo DS and Playstation. He is good with computers, Internet surfing,
mobile phones and other electronic items like video players. He finds it hard to
cope with too much information and prefers structured step-by-step options. [4]
p9
[ex 2]: Morning time is very hectic in AA’s home. His mum has to get three
children ready for school and it would be good if AA takes responsibility for
preparing his school bag. Besides managing time effectively, AA also should
remember what he should pack for the school day. Doing so will make both
AA and his mum less anxious and angry in the morning. [4] p11
[ex 3]: MW is very shy and can get very anxious when in crowded places or
when having to interact with other people. He finds it difficult to read other
people’s faces, and he finds it hard to show his emotions. He does not know
how to tell others what his feelings or moods are, and he has learned to smile
even when he is very anxious or upset. [4] p17
These small stories are used to identify the core elements in the difficult situations the
teenagers face, and they do in fact contain a wealth of information for both software
and interaction designers. In particular, the stories point to the complicated
environments the intended cognitive support systems have to function in. The stories
provide insights regarding the agents involved in difficult situations, as well as the
nature of actual situations. They also illustrate the core problems enumerated in
section two. From this perspective it is quite clear that examples 1 and 2 highlights
the lack of organization and planning often experienced by people with ASD.
Examples 2 and 3 illustrate the need to work with communicative reciprocity, and
example 3 also shows very clearly the experienced problem with social reciprocity.
Each in their own way, the three examples point to pertinent consequences of
having impaired executive functions. In the first example we see the need of reducing
and selecting information in potentially stressful situations. In order for the system to
achieve this goal, teacher and student must work together and find anchor-points in
the layout of the grocery stores in questions, handle the small print on foods in the
stores and so on. The problem outlined in Example 2 is actually tied in with example
1. Besides dealing with ordinary routines such as matching a timetable with lists of
books needed for the day, AA has to be mindful of the menu for the school lunch. If
the school lunch on a given day contains items to which he is allergic, he must
prepare a lunch bag as well. This property of the scenario turns out to be rather
typical. In many cases, the user narratives indicate the need for adding extra
information to the ICT solutions proposed in the HANDS toolset. A possible solution
to the problem at hand would be to incorporate the school menus into the toolset for
this student. Use stories regarding public transportation points to similar needs e.g.
timetables for busses and other relevant contextual information.
Example 1 also provides very important information about the level of skills the
designers can anticipate in this case. This kind of information is vital for
understanding the Information Ecology: the often very complicated contexts that
information systems have to work in [14]. In one school, several of the students are
not actually using mobile phones, but there is an existing practice for using MP3
players and digital cameras.
When teachers and other caretakers work with designing cognitive support systems
for people with ASD, the solutions must necessarily be very individualized. This
means that scripts for structuring recurring tasks such as morning routines, or ‘social
stories’ used to describe social interactions must be highly customizable in order to
work. The stories mentioned here, nicely illustrate this point. At the same time, most
teachers do in fact report that they often deal with the same kinds of situations, e.g.,
dealing with breaks between classes, using public transportation, preparing for trips
etc., which obviously is consistent with the insight that the three problematic areas
mentioned in section 2 stand out. This leads us to believe that the situations described
through user stories do in fact have a logical core that can be represented formally.
But we are also led to believe that the narrative form actually is a very important
instrument in extracting this information from experience. What remains from this
extraction process is the task of ensuring that other needs that have not necessarily
been told in the same fashion are also covered by the requirements that inductively
emerge from the narratives.
4 Handling the Difficult Situations: A tempo-modal model
It is evident from the sections above that it is very important for teenagers with ASD
to be able to handle difficult situations. It is of great significance to them to have the
feeling of staying in control even in difficult situations. The purpose of HANDS is to
assist them in this respect.
In order to handle a difficult situation the person in question must first of all
understand that a difficult situation is coming. Next he or she will have to generate an
appropriate goal, i.e. an outcome of the situation which is acceptable as a solution to
the problem. Finally, the person must be able of stepwise carrying out the plan
leading to the goal. As it follows from the sections above, all this will in many cases
be very difficult for the teenagers with ASD. However, the HANDS toolset should
provide help in all these respects.
First of all the HANDS toolset should be designed to predict that a difficult situation
may be coming up. This means that it should at ‘the right time’ make the user aware
of the problem. In fact, we may here refer to Kairos concept [27] which is a nice
classical way of expressing what is needed when warning the user.
The idea of Kairos has a very long history. It can be traced back to pre-Socratic,
Greek thought. The idea was incorporated in New Testament texts, and it later
became an important element of Christian theology. Kairos also became essential
within the theories of rhetoric [20]. The concept is difficult to translate since it
combines notions of ’the right time’ and ‘the appropriate measure’ with
considerations regarding ethics (doing the right thing) and Pythagorean notions of
justice and harmony. In a Greek fable from the 6th century B.C., Kairos was portrayed
as a god — in fact, a young athlete running towards us. He is bald, but he has a lock
of hair on his forehead, which we may grasp in order to stop him if we are prepared to
do so. If not, it becomes too late. There is no way to grasp his bald head when he has
passed us. According to the fable not even Zeus can pull him back [2].
The point when dealing with the classical notion of Kairos seems to be that it is
closely linked to the idea of being prepared. We have to grasp the moment before it is
too late. On the other hand, there is no point in reacting before Kairos is present. This
means being aware of what might be about to come. The practical and technological
problem is, of course, how we should identify Kairos? When is ‘the right time’ for
intervention and persuasion? And how should the information about its coming be
communicated?
In [27] it is argued that taking this classical notion of Kairos into account and
transforming it into a modern context, the practical identification ‘the right time’ will
depend on the calculated probabilities of various possible future developments. This
calculation will have to be situation-sensitive. In fact, the identification of Kairos may
in the context of HANDS be based on information included in an online diary
prepared for the individual teenager with ASD (see [4, 10, 25]).
When the system has identified a Kairos at which the user should be warned and
encouraged to take action, it should also suggest the best possible outcome in the
situation and generate a stepwise plan which if followed will lead the teenager with
ASD out of the difficult situation and to the goal. This means that the user will be
asked to accept a certain goal, and having accepted this, a certain realistic action
representing a first step towards the goal will be suggested to the teenager. When this
step has been carried out further steps will be suggested. When a suggestion has been
made to the teenager, he or she can in principle accept or decline to follow the
suggestion. From an ethical point of view, it is essential that the wish of the teenager
to stay in control is respected. If the teenager at some stage chooses not to follow the
suggestion given by the system, an alternative plan should be generated based on this
choice. This alternative plan should lead to the best possible outcome given the choice
of the teenager.
The idea of handling difficult situations may be conceptually presented using a model
of branching time. In fact, since we want the model to include the notion of plans
(including alternative plans) it will be obvious to make use of so-called Ockhamistic
branching time models, which were first presented by A.N. Prior based on inspiration
from the medieval logician William of Ockham (c. 1285-1349) [16]. In an
Ockhamistic branching time there will at any point (moment) be a selected or
preferred future branch among the various possible future branches. In a non-
Ockhamistic branching time model this will not be the case.
A model based on Ockhamistic temporal logic which may be interpreted as
including a dynamic plan, i.e., a plan including alternative plans corresponding to any
possible choice made by the person(s) in question. This means that the model should
include a suggested choice (i.e., an advice) whenever there are alternative futures.
This plan is supposed to lead the user to the best possible outcome given the choices
of the user.
It is possible to formulate a detailed temporal logic corresponding to Prior’s
understanding of the Ockhamistic idea. See [24]. Diagrammatically, we may present
the idea of an Ockhamistic branching time model as shown below:
Kairos
Fig. 1: An Ockhamistic branching time model
The idea presented in the above diagram is the identification of a difficult situation at
“the right time” (Kairos) and should give rise to a plan leading to the best possible
outcome. The main plan and the alternative plans are all indicated in the model by the
use of arrows.
If the teenager with ASD chooses not to follow the advices given by the system,
an alternative plan should be generated leading to the best possible outcome given the
choice of the teenager.
It is a crucial property of the branching time model that every point (moment) of
the model can be conceived as a very expressive proposition including all information
about all other parts of the system as seen from this particular point (moment). The
moment may be understood as a conjunction of everything which is true at this
particular moment, including statements about the possible future, the past and the
past possible futures. In this way every part of the branching time system may be said
to include information about the complete system. Conceived in this manner, it is
obvious that the representation of the handling of a difficult situation in terms of
branching time model is very rich, conceptually speaking. It seems obvious that the
dynamic planning needed to handle such situations may be represented in terms of
Ockhamistic branching time models.
In addition, this kind of diagrams may also be useful as a background for
discussing and designing the various features of the HANDS toolset.
5 How can PD technology support teenagers in handling difficult
situations
Designing for such varied outcomes, in such difficult circumstances, and for such a
specific target group obviously poses a challenge. Since the purpose of the project is
to investigate how attitude and behavior may be changed through the use of
technology, it seems natural to draw on the tradition of Persuasive Technology and
Persuasive Design in the process.
In the groundbreaking work of B.J. Fogg [5, 6], interactive computing technology
can take on three basic forms of persuasive roles. ICT may embody Tools of
persuasion, such as guiding the user through preferred paths of an information space;
ICT may function as a Social Actor, in the sense that it invokes social response; and
finally, ICT may be used to persuade people through Simulations. Each of these three
roles, known as the functional triad, is then described through a series of principles,
investigating the persuasive potential of the roles. In the HANDS toolset, we propose
to utilize all three roles for a variety of purposes.
The functionality of the HANDS toolset consist of six parts:
1. The Handy Interactive Persuasive Diary (HIPD).
An interactive calendar function with usual calendar facilities, but also with
configurable/programmable abilities and “knowledge” about situations, where
the user is more likely to be persuaded to adopt a new behavior or attitude. It is
also capable of raising the awareness of problematic behavior. It is supposed to
be interactive and able to initiate a user session autonomously.
2. The Simple-Safe-Success Instructor (SSSI).
An instructor function that can be designed to give precise and practical advice
on how to solve a given problem. This function is also highly configurable, and
may incorporate various media formats. The SSSI is flexible, and its level of
support to the user can be reduced once the user becomes better capable of
managing the problem.
3. The Personal Trainer (PT)
A training function which is basically a simulator of problematic situations
with concrete and practical advice, given with the necessary credibility. It may
function is the same way as the SSSI, but for rehearsal purposes.
4. The Individualizer (TIn)
This facility makes it possible for the teacher and the teenager with ASD to
customize the functionality of the toolset directly from the phone. In terms of
aesthetics, this includes the choice of audio- and visual skins.
5. The SharingPoint (SPo)
This facility makes it possible for the teenagers with ASD to share their
knowledge, experience and interests with other users thus facilitating a
protected creative environment for young people with ASD.
6. The Credibility-o-Meter (CoMe)
This facility is an attempt to measure to what extent the HANDS toolset is
experienced as being credible by the user. The measurement is mainly based on
the electronic footprints left by the user on the mobile device during normal
use.
The HIPD is clearly the most important component of the HANDS toolset. The other
components can all be integrated in the HIPD, which provide a temporal framework
for the practical use of the toolset. In fact, the interactivity of the HIPD is very much
based on the fact that the other facilities are available in the same system. In this way
the use of the system may promote certain kinds of user activities.
When the HIPD has been developed, it is expected that – when properly adjusted to
the special needs of the teenager with ASD – it can support him socially. The idea is
that the HIPD tool should warn him when a difficult situation is likely to come up,
and that it should also offer to guide him through the difficulties.
In order to enhance motivation the HIPD requirements should include ways of
letting the user be in control.
6 Towards an implementation of the Hands toolset
In the HANDS project the tools will be implemented at two different levels through
two stages. We will first implement a toolbox to be used by the teachers at the partner
schools. As such, the system should offer all the facilities that the teacher may want to
employ in implementing the system with the participants. Given this toolbox the
teacher should, in close cooperation with the HANDS researchers, implement a
specific tool oriented towards each individual teenager. In this process it will also be
essential to involve each teenager in order to optimize the knowledge-development,
customization and adaptability of the tool.
The system development within HANDS will be carried out according to the
principles of the so-called Value Sensitive Design (VSD). According to [7] VSD can
be presented as “a theoretically grounded approach to the design of technology that
accounts for human values in a principled and comprehensive manner throughout the
design process.’’ This idea will be integrated in the design process in HANDS, which
will follow the so called SCRUM principles [18]. This means that the development of
the toolset will be an iterative incremental process. It also means that there are some
specific roles in the process:
1) The Product Owner (in this case representing the three universities and the four
schools in HANDS);
2) The SCRUM team (in this case representing the three software companies in
HANDS).
During the production period the Team will produce every 2-3 weeks a new partial
release of the toolset. Each release will be discussed and evaluated by the Product
Owner. This evaluation will clearly also have to involve considerations based on ICT
ethics and system developers [1]. The general assumption within the HANDS
consortium is that if the HIPD (and the HANDS toolset as a whole) is being
developed in this way, it will be more likely that it can function effectively as a tool to
help the teenagers with a diagnosis of autism navigate through the demands made
upon them, and develop socially. One of the reasons making this likely is that this
procedure will make it realistic to involve the users closely during the system
development process.
CONCLUSION
We have argued that the toolset described in the requirements recently prepared may
be seen as the obvious choice given a conceptual analysis of what it would mean for a
teenager with ASD to handle difficult situations. The conceptual analysis is based on
information embedded in “usage narratives” and on a notion of Ockhamistic
branching time.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors acknowledge the stimulus and support of the EC-sponsored project,
‘Helping Autism-Diagnosed teenagers Navigate and Develop Socially (HANDS)’,
sponsored by the European Commission as part of the 7th Framework Programme,
Theme 7.2, Accessible and Inclusive ICT.
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