An affordance-based design task clarification framework for speech and language therapeutic toys

Abstract

The task clarification stage is characterised by a high degree of uncertainty due to the lack of information available to the designer at the beginning of a new design project. For this reason, designers find this stage the most challenging, especially if the designer does not know the context in which the proposed artefact and its end users will operate. Given that the success of a new product highly depends on how well the product requirements have been elicited, communicated and understood by the designer, early design support in this regard would alleviate the activities within the task clarification and subsequent design stages. The motivation of this research concerns early childhood speech and language therapy (SLT), which is facilitated through toys and play. For SLT to be effective and efficient, therapy must continue beyond the clinical setting. For this reason, apart from speechlanguage pathologists (SLPs), caregivers have a relevant role in treating language disorders in children. Thus, the end users of intentionally designed therapeutic toys for SLT, referred to as speech and language therapeutic toys (SALTTs), are the clinicians (SLPs), caregivers and children. Through research carried out in this dissertation, it was established that the affordances of toys highly influence children’s attention span and engagement with toys. Moreover, affordances permit designers to understand how a product will be used by its users. A literature review determined that designers lack a suitable means by which designers can elicit affordance-based end-users requirements for SALTT. By looking at the affordances that SALTT artefacts need to offer during their use phase, the descriptive Speech and Language Therapy Potential Model (SALT-PM) was developed. A prescriptive framework architecture, Design of Speech and Language Therapeutic Toys (D-SALTT), was also proposed to support novice and experienced designers to elicit and understand end-users affordance-based requirements. These were implemented in a prototype computational tool called ACQUAINT-SALTT. The evaluation of the D-SALTT framework architecture and ACQUAINT-SALTT showed that practising designers positively welcomed the provided user-centred design support for the task clarification stage, particularly the efficiency by which affordance-based requirements can be elicited, enabling them to understand the context of the end users without restricting their creativity.