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A Loggable Aid to Speech: A Research Proposal
JÉRÉMY BARBAY
∗
, CAMILA LABARCA-ROSENBLUTH, and BRANDON PEÑA-HAIPAS, Departamento
de Ciencias de la Computación (DCC), Universidad de Chile, Chile
Fig. 1. Dog with three large voice buttons, one paw on the left-
most one.
Fig. 2. Monk Parakeet using a commercial communication board
application.
Validating that non human animals can communicate with humans
using Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) re-
quires extensive logging, and traditional techniques are costly in
resources and time. We propose to implement 1) a configurable
“communication board” application aimed at small non human
animals able to use touch interfaces, which not only emits human
words associated to each button, but also logs such interactions;
2) a hardware keyboard to extend the use of such an application
to larger non human animals unable to use a touch screen, but
able to use large keys and 3) a centralized back-end gathering the
logs from various devices, facilitating their study by researchers.
We propose to validate the usability of such prototype solutions
with two monk parakeets parrots for the application, a dog and
two cats for the keyboard (and application), and a researcher in
comparative psychology for the website of the back-end.
CCS Concepts: •Applied computing
→
Computer-assisted
instruction;Interactive learning environments;Computer games;
•Human-centered computing →User interface design.
Additional Key Words and Phrases: Animal Computer Interaction,
Augmentative Interspecies Communication, Comparative Psychol-
ogy, Digital Life Enrichment.
∗Contact author.
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Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored.
For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s).
ACI’22, December 5–8, 2022, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom
©2022 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-9830-5/22/12.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3565995.3566031
ACM Reference Format:
Jérémy Barbay, Camila Labarca-Rosenbluth, and Brandon Peña-
Haipas. 2022. A Loggable Aid to Speech: A Research Proposal.
In Ninth International Conference on Animal-Computer Interac-
tion (ACI’22), December 5–8, 2022, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United
Kingdom. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 7 pages. https://doi.org/10.
1145/3565995.3566031
1 INTRODUCTION
Various projects use Augmentative and Alternative Commu-
nication (AAC) techniques designed for humans with non hu-
man animals (referred to as "Other Animals Than Humans" or
OATHs from now on) to improve the communication between
humans and OATHs. For instance, Cristina Hunger [
6
,
7
]
taught the dog Stella to use Augmentative and Alternative
Communication (AAC) to better communicate. The
How They
Can Talk
research group [
5
] is compiling the best ways to do
so, in collaboration with the company Fluent Pet [
14
] selling
specialized buttons to help people replicating their method.
Any scientific validation of such communication abilities will
require extensive logging of the interactions, which is usu-
ally performed by constantly recording the subjects on video,
having the guardians marking each communication interac-
tions, and researchers analyzing the context before and after
the interaction. Such extensive logging either requires taking
some manual notes at each press of a button, or recording
on video all the interactions, and spending time analyzing
such interactions afterwards. Such process is cumbersome and
time consuming (see Figure 4 for an example of set-up to
take manual note at each interaction, and Figure 5 for an
example of the resulting manual log). Being tied by such a
1
ACI’22, December 5–8, 2022, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom Barbay et al.
time consuming process is likely to restrict the amount of
such usage data, which can be gathered.
Could a dedicated application and dedicated devices give a
similar experience to that procured by voice-recording buttons
and digital applications? Could it have the added advantage
of the automatic recording of an extensive log of usages?
Could researchers and educators study such log in order 1)
to design AAC techniques more appropriate for each species
(e.g. in terms of the amount of pressure required to activate
the buttons, of the sound frequencies to record and play
back), and 2) to list, evaluate and compare methodologies to
teach the use of AAC techniques to OATH subjects and to
their human guardians (e.g. the order and pace at which to
introduce new words and the use of combination of words)?
We propose to design, implement and validate 1) a config-
urable “communication board” application, which not only
emits human words associated to each button, but also logs
such interactions, and allows a guardian to annotate the re-
cent interactions for future analysis; 2) a series of hard-ware
keyboards to be used by medium-sized OATH animals such
as dogs and cats to interact with such application; and 3) a
centralized back-end, gathering the annotated logs from vari-
ous devices. We propose to validate our approach in two steps:
first, we hope to validate the usability of the software and de-
vices with OATH subjects, simply showing that they are able
to press buttons to trigger the playing of recorded sound, in a
way equivalent to what they do with existing voice-recording
buttons; and second, we hope to validate the usability of the
website gathering the usage information from the software
(and, indirectly, devices) for researchers who wish to work on
validating or invalidating the various concepts related to ad-
vanced communication using AAC techniques. In particular,
we do not propose to validate the concept of advanced com-
munication using AAC techniques: such an objective will take
years (or decades) and is beyond the scope of this research
proposal. We just aim to advance the computational tools
required to perform such research.
After more formally describing some previous results con-
cerning the use of digital live enrichment applications in
comparative psychology, and the use of AAC techniques by
OATH animals in Section 2, we describe the system that
we propose to develop (Section 3), the experiments we are
planning to perform to validate its usability and assess its
impact (Section 4), and the results that we are hoping for
(Section 5).
2 BACKGROUND
Before describing the material and software solutions that we
propose to design, implement and evaluate, we describe some
previous results concerning the use of digital live enrichment
applications in comparative psychology (Section 2.1), the use
of AAC techniques by OATH animals (Section 2.2), and the
technologies available for designing new AAC technologies
(Section 2.3).
2.1 Digital Life Enrichment Applications
The study of the abilities of OATHs and the use of life en-
richment activities in general, and digital ones in particular,
have been interconnected from their very beginning. General
preoccupation for the welfare of captive OATHs is at least
150 years old. Kohn
[10]
dates the first legislation about zoo
animal welfare to 1876, with the “Cruelty to Animals Act”
in the “Criminal Code of Canada”. Since then, the list of
duties of such institutions has grown to include not only the
basic welfare tenets of adequate feed, water, shelter, sanita-
tion and veterinary care of their OATH residents, but also
higher level concerns such as the handling and training of the
OATH residents, their psychological well-being, the design
of their enclosures, the preservation of their species, issues
of environmental and conservation, and programs to breed
captive OATHs. Kohn
[10]
mentions (in 1994) the “emerging
field of psychological well-being in captive animals”, incor-
porating physical health, normal and captive behavior, and
interactions with the enclosure environments and mentioning
how environmental enrichment is an important component of
this issue. He goes on to list innovations in life enrichment
such as specialized toys and puzzle feed boxes (but no digital
applications).
Yet, the use of digital applications to measure OATH abili-
ties seems to predate Kohn’s report [
10
] by at least 10 years.
In his discussion of the impact of game-like computerized
tasks designed to promote and assess the psychological well-
being of captive OATHs, Washburn
[18]
refers to a three
decade old history in 2015, placing the beginning of such
use sometimes around 1985. In 1990, when Richardson et al.
[15]
describe a Computerized Test System to measure some
abilities in a population of rhesus monkeys, they mention that
“the animals readily started to work even when the reward was
a small pellet of chow very similar in composition to the chow
just removed from the cage”, and that “the tasks have some
motivating or rewarding of their own”.
Furthermore, OATH subjects seem to choose to partici-
pate in cognitive studies involving digital applications over
other activities. Washburn
[18]
describes, among various other
anecdotes, how game-like application for apes were developed
as early as 1984, and how the subjects “chose to work on
joystick-based tasks, even though they did not need to perform
the game-like tests to receive food”, and “opted for computer
task activity over other potential activities that were avail-
able to them”, a behavior described ever since 1963 [
9
] and
christened as “Countrafereeloading” [
11
] in 1977. Lastly, he
describes evidence that the subjects were not only motivated
by food rewards, but also by the tasks themselves: when given
a choice between completing trials for pellets or receiving
pellets for free but not being able to play the game-like tasks
during the free-pellet period, the subjects chose to work for
their reward.
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A Loggable Aid to Speech: A Research Proposal ACI’22, December 5–8, 2022, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom
2.2 AAC uses by OATHs
In the last decade, various solutions allowing OATH animals to
communicate in human words by pressing buttons associated
to recorded voice have been developed, promoted by Cristina
Hunger [
7
] in the case of dogs and OATH animals of similar
sizes (Section 2.2.1) and by Jennifer Cunha [
3
] for parrots
(Section 2.2.2).
2.2.1 AAC for medium sized OATHs. In 2018, Cristina Hunger [
7
]
described in her book [
6
] how the dog Stella successfully
learned to use Augmentative and Alternative Communication
(AAC) to better communicate. In the last four years, the book
inspired a whole community of guardians to replicate their
feats of communication (see Figures 1 and 3 for pictures of
a dog with their AAC buttons), and various companies to
sell sets of Recordable Buttons along with instructions about
how to progressively introduce them to OATH subjects.
Currently, the research group
How They Can Talk
[
5
] is
studying the best way to measure and validate the depth
of communication performed between humans and OATHs
using such technology, and the best way to teach both humans
and OATHs to use those technologies to communicate. A key
hurdle on this path will be to measure an adequate metric to
measure the success of such communication methodology.
Also, there is precedence in lexigram keyboard usage for
ape cognition and communication research [
16
], which sets a
precedence for spatial cues in AAC devices, and evidence of
dogs learning associative positions in the field of comparative
psychology [1].
2.2.2 AAC for parrots. Even though parrots are known by
the general public for their ability to learn and repeat spo-
ken words, the ability to truly “speak” varies greatly among
individuals of the same species, and among species [
13
]. Com-
pensating such variability, some human guardians successfully
taught some parrots to communicate via a touch screen inter-
face: Cunha and Rhoads [3] describe how
An enculturated Goffin’s cockatoo (Cacatua goffi-
ana) was taught to use a commercially available,
android-based communication board. Through as-
sociative conditioning, the subject learned to press
pictures representing items in categories for foods,
beverages, activities, objects, and interactions.
See Section 2.3.2 for a description of the software they used,
and Figures 2 and 6 for pictures of a monk parakeet sub-
ject using the CommBoards App [
17
] to ask for Water, and
Figure 7 for a picture of the same subject using the first
prototype developed for this research proposal to ask for a
treat.
2.3 Input Device Technologies Available
We describe here the various technologies available to imple-
ment AAC with OATHs, both physically (Section 2.3.1) and
digitally (Section 2.3.2), each with its own advantages and
drawbacks, and each adapted to specific species of OATH
subjects.
2.3.1 Physical Technologies. While some researchers in ACI
designed, created and evaluated devices specifically designed
for dogs, based on the way they naturally interact with their
environment through biting, pulling and tugging, or simply
touching with their nose [
2
,
8
,
8
], Cristina Hunger [
6
,
7
]
used classical AAC devices, which are round buttons with a
diameter of 10 cm, which play a previously recorded voice
when pressed (see Figure 1 for a picture of a dog using such
buttons). Albeit they were originally designed for humans,
they seem to be usable by medium sized OATHs with enough
strength to press the buttons: the users of the forum of How
They Can Talk website [
5
] list a wide range of species such
as dogs, cats, bunnies, rats, guinea-pigs, horses and peafowls.
The buttons come in various colors to differentiate them,
but it is recommended to glue them on a fixed board so
that OATH subjects can use their relative positions to better
identify them, as their color perception might not be the same
as that of their human guardians.
The company Fluent Pet, in collaboration with the re-
searchers from the How They Can Talk research group, is
designing and selling specialized buttons to help people to
replicate their method. Their buttons are smaller, and require
less strength to be pressed (see Figure 3 for a picture of a
dog facing two such voice buttons), making them appropriate
for smaller OATHs such as small rodents, but are still too
hard to press for some smaller OATHs such as small birds.
They are of a uniform color, but come with brightly colored
pads, so that OATHs can use a combination of their relative
position on each pad and of the color of the pad to distinguish
between buttons.
Getting data about the frequency with which each button
is pressed either requires taking some manual notes at each
press of a button, or to record on video all the interactions,
and spend time analyzing such interactions afterwards. Such
a process is cumbersome and time consuming (see Figure 4 for
an example of set-up to take manual note at each interaction,
and Figure 5 for an example of the resulting manual log). Be-
ing tied by such a time consuming process is likely to restrict
the amount of such usage data, which can be gathered. The
company is currently designing a product partially automa-
tizing such logging,
Fluent Pet Connect1
, with a separate
speaker for each tile of 6 buttons, and able to connect to a
cell phone via WiFi. Originally scheduled to be released in
the summer 2022 (in the North Hemisphere), the product
was not yet available at the date of redaction of this work
(August 2022).
2.3.2 Digital Technologies. Some guardians of parrots use the
highly configurable CommBoards App. This application was
designed by and for humans, the authors mentioning on their
website the following:
CommBoards was born as a side-project meant to
help our close friend whose child was diagnosed
with ASD. We decided to create an app tailored
1https://fluent.pet/products/fluentpet-connect
3
ACI’22, December 5–8, 2022, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom Barbay et al.
Fig. 3. Dog with two small AAC voice but-
tons from Fluent Pets.
Fig. 4. Experimental Setup with Manual Log
accounting for the frequency of usage of each
term associated to a button.
Fig. 5. Close-up on the Manual Log from
the picture presented in Figure 4. Here each
of the button was associated to a favorite
toy of the subject.
Fig. 6. Monk parakeet us-
ing the AAC Application
CommBoards
[
17
]. Such interac-
tion was not repeated, to avoid
frustrating the subject when
moving to the future applica-
tion with the functionality to
log the interactions.
Fig. 7. Monk parakeet using
the early prototype developed
for this research proposal. Such
interactions were not and will
not be repeated until a stable
version of the application is de-
veloped and validated with hu-
man subjects first.
to the child and parent’s needs, and share it with
the world.
It has been used with success by some guardians of OATH
trained in the use of touch interface [
3
]: see the pictures of
a monk parakeet parrot using this application in Figures 2
and 6.
The CommBoards App application displays a set of visual
cards arranged on a grid. Each card is associated to a short
sequence of words (e.g. “I”, “Yes”, “No”, “Want”), and to an
audio recording of a voice pronouncing such words. Some cards
(e.g. “to play”) are associated to a separate grid of words (e.g.
“Garden”, “Ball ”, etc.) to be used to complement the original
sequence of word. The sequence of words corresponding to
the sequence of cards pressed is composed on the top of the
screen. Selecting the special “settings” icon prompts for a
challenge (e.g. typing a sequence of 4 digits), which in turn
yields access to the settings of the application, where one can
create, move and delete cards from the grids.
3 SYSTEMS PROPOSED
We propose to design, implement and validate a system com-
posed of two components. The first component is a config-
urable software to be used directly by small sized OATHs via
the use of touch screen interfaces (see a picture of a monk
parakeet parrot using a first prototype of such an application
in Figure 7). This component will be the one in charge of
emitting sounds, to record a log of the input events, and even-
tually to record additional information such as input from
the guardian or experimenter, or pictures or videos captured
by the computing device (to complement the automatically
generated log with some context). We describe this software
component in Section 3.2. The second component is a physical
input device to be used by OATHs unable to use a touch
screen, but able to press keys designed according to their
morphology (in terms of size and pressure amount required
to activate each key), consisting in a set of input devices,
which can be connected to a computing device running the
software described as the first component above. We describe
our proposal and preliminary work on this component in
Section 3.1.
3.1 Physical Keyboards
Dog and cat paws are too large to press the keys of keyboards
designed for humans, and keyboards designed for humans
are not sturdy enough to sustain being used by chickens or
dogs. As there does not seem to be any keyboard with very
large keys (e.g. 3 by 3 cms) which could be connected to
a computer device available on the market, we propose to
produce such devices ourselves, first by recycling existing
keyboards designed for humans into keyboards more suitable
for OATHs with a few keys (Section 3.1.1), then by building
one from bare electronic components with a larger quantity
of keys (Section 3.1.2).
3.1.1 Reconstructed USB Keyboard. to test the hypothesis
that a USB keyboard could replace the boards of AAC buttons
4
A Loggable Aid to Speech: A Research Proposal ACI’22, December 5–8, 2022, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom
currently used in Augmentative Interspecies Communication
[AIC] experiments, we designed and implemented two simple
keyboards by merely removing most plastic keys from existing
keyboards, and gluing the remaining ones to larger “keys”, to
make it them easy to press by OATHs (see Figure 8 for an
illustration of the construction process).
The material of the large keys must be light enough so that
the springs of the original keyboard actually raise back the
key: for instance, keys made of wood would be too heavy.
For the first prototype (see Figure 9 for a picture), we used
“EVA rubber”, a light material left over from the packaging
of the AAC buttons from Fluent Pet buttons. The material
is light enough for the springs of the original keyboard to
push the keys back in place, but too fragile to support the
repeated impact of the chickens’ beaks or of dogs’ paws for
any reasonable length of time. We plan to test the use of such
a keyboard with cats. The second prototype (see Figure 10
for a picture), we used “poly-carbonate”, a light material
commonly used for construction. The material is light enough
for the springs of the original keyboard to push the keys back
in place, and resistant enough to resist repetitive presses from
dogs and chicken. We reinforced the glue with screws.
3.1.2 Built from Scratch Grid Keyboard. Various projects are
described online, which aim to build a USB or Bluetooth
input device from scratch. Arduino Keyboard [
4
] (if none
with such large keys). The technology most recommended
for such projects seems to be MacroPads [
12
]. The amount
of keys, whose pressing can be recorded, seems relatively
large, especially if one does not need to record the pressing of
too many keys at once (e.g. playing chords on a piano), but
rather a single modifier key (e.g. the
Shift
key, potentially
for guardians to press when modeling the use of the keyboard
to a learner).
3.2 Digital Application
Whereas the
CommBoards App
[
17
] is highly configurable and
produces a text sequence of the words produces by pressing
its buttons, it lacks several options required for the purpose
of this study, automatizing as much as possible the creation,
gathering and analysis of usage logs of the use of ACC tech-
niques:
∙
gathering the usage history on a remote server, to avoid
the cumbersome and error prone process of gathering
such usage history from distinct devices used;
∙
allowing the guardian to label such log usage (either
while interacting with the application or device, or later
on) to differentiate between key presses resulting from
the modeling by the guardian or from the “real” usage
by a subject, for instance a special, human specific,
modifier key (such as the
Shift
,
Alt
or
Ctrl
keys of
classical human keyboards) for guardians to be able to
label in real time an interaction with the device(s) as
one performed by the guardian rather than the subject;
∙
activating the buttons both through a press on the
screen and through keyboard presses;
∙
running on both traditional computers and modern cell
phones and tablets.
As such we propose to design, develop and validate a se-
quence of software solutions which mimic some of the features
of the CommBoards App while complementing them with
features required by our study. We propose to develop the
following features:
(1)
playing sounds on buttons and keyboard presses (see
Figure 11 for a screenshot of such a first prototype,
available at https://incalab.cl/~jbarbay/ComBoard/.);
(2)
configure the number and positions of the buttons, as
well as the keys and sounds associated to them;
(3)
configure a server to which the usage information is
automatically sent;
(4)
configure the system to take a picture on each press of
a button;
(5)
configure the system to record a short video after each
press of a button;
(6) configure the system to record a video stream continu-
ously, but save short extracts corresponding only to the
interval starting before and finishing after each press,
for a configurable length of time, so that to save stor-
age space and transmission bandwidth to the central
repository of logs.
Pictures and Videos are needed to give a context to the
communication being recorded, so that researchers can eval-
uate the intentionality of the communication attempt. For
instance, the intentionality will be rated differently if the
video shows the subject as waling on the buttons rather than
pressing it with a beak or paw.
A first version of such a software, able to emit sounds, but
not yet allowing the configuration of buttons nor to gather
a log, was successfully tested by humans and OATHs: see a
picture of a monk parakeet parrot using it in Figure 7.
4 EXPERIMENTS PLANNED
The experiments planned aim to validate the most basic
hypothesis behind the design of the software and physical
products developed, and to guide the ongoing design of more
advanced versions.
4.1 Experimental Protocol
Each iterated phase of validation by OATHs will be preceded
by an extensive validation phase by human subjects, to avoid
any frustration of the OATHs subject, both for ethical reasons
and for the success of the experiment, as such frustration
would anyway taint the results of the experiments. We plan
to execute each experiment with some medium size OATHs
such as dogs, cats and chickens; and some small size OATHs
such as monk parakeets, but will welcome the participation
from any willing guardians and their protegees from other
species:
(1)
Presented with a keyboard with a single button, the
subject is expected to press it to get attention or access
to a toy (for dogs and cats) or food (for chicken);
5
ACI’22, December 5–8, 2022, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom Barbay et al.
Fig. 8. Illustration of the process to pro-
duce a keyboard for OATHs with few keys:
removing most plastic keys from existing
keyboards, and gluing the remaining ones to
larger panels.
Fig. 9. First prototype of a keyboard for
OATH. The panels glued are made of light
material, making the keyboard adequate for
cats, but inadequate for chickens or dogs.
Fig. 10. Second prototype of a keyboard
for OATH. The panels are made of poly-
carbonate and both glued and screwed to
the keys, making the keyboard adequate for
chickens or dogs.
Fig. 11. First Prototype of loggable communication board. The but-
tons are organized by categories: the first row corresponding to answers,
the second one to actions and the third one to locations commonly
used by the subjects. All the words which appear in the communication
board are terms used by the guardian outside of the communication
board, which the subjects were able to hear (and sometimes utter)
before the introduction of the communication board, and with it the
ability to emit such words. The words “COUCOU” and “OTRA” in
particular are already pronounced by the particular subjects for whom
this early prototype of communication board was designed: the word
“COUCOU” was modeled to be uttered as a greeting and as an answer
in a game of hiding labeled “peekabo o”, and the word “OTRA”, mean-
ing “OTHER” in Spanish, was modeled to be uttered when asking to
repeat an action, mostly when receiving a reward, but also to repeat
an exercise.
(2)
Presented with a keyboard with two, three or four but-
tons, the subject is expected to press one to get access
to the corresponding toy (for dogs and cats) or food
(for chicken).
Two is the minimum amount of buttons required to measure
the ability to choose between two options. Increasing the
amount of buttons will allow measuring how many associative
positions the subject can learn, and facilitate measuring the
intentionality of even short sequences of interactions, as op-
posed to sequences of binary choices, which can be difficult to
distinguish from random ones. Space placement is likely to be
a factor in the usability of such keyboards. Having an exten-
sive log of usage on keyboards with distinct space placements
will allow researchers to emit and validate hypothesis on the
key parameters of space placement on such keyboards for
various species. Even though many more experiments can be
designed using such devices and software, those experiments
will be enough to validate our hypothesis, which we describe
in the next section.
4.2 Ethical Guarantees
We are currently applying to the local Institutional Animal
Care and Use Committee (IACUC) for the authorisation to
run such experiments, for such application to be processed
during the initial phase of development of both software and
devices, and during the phase of testing with human subjects.
The following measures are embedded in the experimental
protocols to guarantee the subjects’ welfare and to minimise
their frustration:
(1)
Each version of each product (electronic and digital)
is separately tested by two human subjects (its author
on one hand, and the project coordinator on the other)
before being tested with OATH subjects.
(2)
Each subject is offered the use of the products to select
the activity (or toy) with which they wish to play for the
next period. There is a “default” activity, less desirable,
being offered as a substitute if the subject refuses to
use the product.
(3)
No subject is deprived of food or water, and neither food
nor water is used to motivate the use of the products
by the subject.
(4)
the emotional state of the subjects will be measured
by their willingness to continue participating in the
6
A Loggable Aid to Speech: A Research Proposal ACI’22, December 5–8, 2022, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom
activity, as the activities can be interrupted at any time
by the subject, by simply going away;
(5)
the potential frustration and negative welfare of the
subjects will be mitigated by always offering an alter-
native to the activity being evaluated: for instance, if a
dog is required to press one of two keys to specify which
of their favorite toys they want to play with, we plan
to always have a third toy available for direct access (in
addition to the option for the dog to just go away).
5 RESULTS HOPED FOR
By performing such experiments, we hope to validate
(1) the usability of the application by OATHs to validate
∙
the possibility of reproducing behaviors observed by
medium sized OATHs with traditional buttons, even
though the experimental set-up introduces an in-
creased distance between the button and the speaker
playing the sound; and to validate
∙
the possibility of reproducing behaviors observed by
small sized OATHs with the CommBoards App; to
(2)
the usability of the application by guardians, and par-
ticular their ability to
∙
configure which button corresponds to which sound,
to
∙
indicate which key presses correspond to them model-
ing the desired behavior, as opposed to OATHs’ key
presses, and to
∙
annotate the OATHs’ key presses with some addi-
tional information, such as whether this key press is
perceived as intentional or not;
(3)
the usability of the website presenting the usage infor-
mation to researchers, and in particular their ability
to
∙
visualize basic statistical information about such logs,
such as the frequency of usage of terms associated to
buttons and the evolution of such frequencies in time,
to
∙
select and download such usage information in a for-
mat that they can use to perform more advanced
statistical analysis.
6 CONCLUSION
We have described our research proposal and preliminary
work concerning the design, implementation and validation
of a loggable and configurable communication board with
OATH of various sizes. This work is still in its early stage,
and we welcome any kind of criticism or feedback which could
allow us more success with this project.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We wish to thank Joachim Barbay for his suggestion of using
Svelte
and his mentoring in the development of the first pro-
totype of the application; and the referees for their numerous
suggestions.
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