Autism Assistant: A Platform for Autism Home-Based Therapeutic Intervention

Abstract

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is regarded as the gold standard for treating autism. However, it requires a significant time commitment of 20 to 40 hours per week, which can be expensive for families who may not be able to afford the treatment. ABA therapists emphasize the importance of practicing therapeutic techniques in the child’s natural environment to maintain their effectiveness. Therefore, there is a need to supplement therapy in the home environment where the children spend most of their time. If a parent or caregiver assumes the role of co-therapist and practices with the child, it can result in faster skills improvement. However, many parents lack knowledge about therapeutic protocols. To address this gap, we conducted research and developed educational software for therapeutic interventions for Romanian children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in a home-based setting. We followed the Double Diamond Model, emphasizing the core principle of Human-Centered Design (HCD) methodology, to design the software with a focus on the special needs of end-users. This involved developing proto-personas, wireframes, and interactive prototypes, exploring the latest technologies, and incorporating feedback from experienced ABA therapists. Based on these inputs, we developed the Autism Assistant platform, which includes a mobile application built with Unity and a web application developed with React and Ruby on Rails. The platform underwent evaluation using the Quantitative Evaluation Framework (QEF) based on ISO 9126, and it was considered suitable as educational software for special education.

Keywords

• Autism
• autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
• human-centered design (HCD)
• human-centered computing
• assistive technologies
• applied behavior analysis (ABA)