From SpongeBob to Languages: Designing a Community Word Library for AAC Devices
By Abigail Gunther, Isaac Wan, Kaleb Getu Gezahegn, and Nawal Chaudhry
Check out our Figma prototype!
Overview
In our second design sprint, our group was given the task of redesigning an Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) device by using the theories and principles of a Value Sensitive Design (VSD). By carefully considering our stakeholders’ values and problems, we developed a prototype for a community word library website that allows AAC device users and supporting communities to create, share, and use community-made word packages.
Using and Understanding AAC Devices
As able-bodied college students who use speech as our daily form of communication, we knew very little about AAC devices before tackling this project. In order to help us understand the ins and outs of AAC devices, we had hands-on experience using TouchChat, an AAC application built for Apple products. Additionally, we read “In the Shadow of Misperception: Assistive Technology Use and Social Interactions” by Kristen Shinohara and Jacob O. Wobbrock and “Value Sensitive Design: Theory and Methods” by Batya Friedman, Peter H. Kahn, Jr., and Alan Borning to guide our research and methodology in redesigning AAC devices.
What is Value Sensitive Design?
“Value Sensitive Design seeks to provide theory and method to account for human values in a principled and systematic manner throughout the design process” (VSD Coop).
This design paradigm is especially relevant to redesigning AAC devices because we, as designers, need to be cognizant of the fact that AAC users might have different values, needs, and expectations for communicating than we do.
AAC Device User Panel
Once we had a grasp on the fundamental ideas and purposes of AAC devices and the methods surrounding them, we were lucky enough to have an open and honest discussion regarding AAC devices, their issues, and challenges while using them to communicate in daily life with a panel of AAC device users from Focus Beyond Transition Services.
During the panel, we made notes on the values that seemed especially important to the users:
- speed of communication: using the device was slow, with an output of 8–10 words per minute, and some people would interrupt them while they were trying to communicate
- independence: for one of our panelists, their device had to be taken out by someone else so they could access it
- self-expression: hobbies and interests had to be customized into the device, and there was no way to communicate tone or emotion
- ease of use: finding the right words could be difficult
- device mobility: for larger devices, storage, transportation, and a surface to place the device when in use were all problem areas
- humanity: the device voice did not sound natural, and people would talk to the device and not the user themselves
Most of the challenges panelists faced while using AAC devices were innate to its design, such as being slow to communicate, needing to be on your person, and its unnatural-sounding voicing. Other problems were related to the AAC app’s software design, such as switching between languages, creating personalized phrases, and using vocabulary and icons geared toward a younger audience.
Two specific problems that caught our group’s attention were Ella’s struggle to communicate using specialized vocabulary that was tied to her interests and hobbies (e.g. SpongeBob and the card game Uno) and users’ ability to only communicate in languages with large speaking populations. While the device supported Elena’s needs, who spoke English and Spanish, speakers of minority languages such as Hmong would not be able to enjoy the same level of expression in their language. These problems would ultimately lead us to develop our community word library interface in our Figma prototype.
Affinity Diagramming
Before we began prototyping, we each jotted down some problems, practices, and values we learned from working with the AAC devices, the expert panel, and the papers we read. Next, we grouped our thoughts together by similar themes and related problems. The blue group of post-it notes pertains to society, while the red group of post-it notes relates to problems and values associated with the AAC device’s design. The yellow group of post-it notes correlates to how we evaluate the usefulness of an AAC device’s design.
Using our affinity diagramming, we decided to tackle the issues of language support, which related to three common values: personalization, expressivity, and accessibility.
Pen and Paper Designs
While these values helped dictate our design solutions for AAC devices, a key challenge we ran into was maintaining a design that both solved our designated problem and also held true to the values of personalization, expressivity, and accessibility.
For example, a text-to-speech website would allow AAC users to type in any language and use any words to describe their hobby, but it wasn’t entirely accessible since some users may not know how to spell. Another design was to use a mic connected to a speaker to record words and phrases, but speech is the exact problem AAC users are faced with.
We quickly found, however, that our initial issue was very large and contained too many components that, as designers, were out of our hands. We decided to turn our attention to Ella’s desire to express their love for SpongeBob instead, focusing in particular on the outer supporting community of AAC device users.
We reasoned that if we could make a design that allowed community members to create new vocabulary sets for an interest or hobby that an AAC device user could use, then that could eventually evolve into community-created content for different languages.
Thus our final design, which encompassed all three values and proposed a solution to our old and new problems was a word library interface for community members and users to create, share, download, and use specialized word packages on their AAC devices.
Storyboard
Here is a simple storyboard demonstrating how we intend users to utilize our community word library.
High-Fidelity Prototype
Similar to our last design sprint for class, we used Figma, a collaborative interactable prototyping tool, to create a sample of our community word library interface. Unlike our previous design sprint, our high-fidelity prototype didn’t go through multiple iterations and we only received feedback during a VSD mini-critique presentation. That being said, our group used Ella’s problem, being able to talk about SpongeBob Squarepants, as our prototype’s focal point.
Some key features we knew a community word library interface would need are the ability to create words and upload images for the icons, vocabulary categories (words, phrases, or groups), a rating system, the ability to collaborate between creators, the ability to make a package public (publishing), and the ability to preview and organize the words as they would appear on a device.
While theoretically, users could utilize the community word library interface to share entire languages for AAC device users to download and use, one of the largest constraints that also comes with it being community-driven is that anyone can create and post content.
This leads to a community-focused AAC design being a double-edged sword where an infinite number of “good” possibilities can come from it just as there are an infinite number of “bad” possibilities. The interface’s rating system aims to assist users by making visible community and user approval of the package.
Reflection
Overall, our final prototype design successfully accomplished the most prominent values we deemed necessary for AAC users; these being personalization, expressivity, and accessibility. In addition to these values, we solved two common problems associated with AAC devices: lack of foreign language support and difficulty to use vocabulary tied to specific hobbies. The main strength of our final prototype has to be its ease of use and support across both desktop and mobile devices. The two main weaknesses of our prototype’s design were its lack of diverse examples and the unforeseen consequences on speech-language pathologists (SLP). Because we used SpongeBob as our interface’s only example, it leaves our audience questioning the versatility and capability of our prototype to create complex language libraries. While the prototype’s design was mainly centered around AAC users’ values, it doesn’t necessarily account for SLPs’ values of safety and security. For example, user ratings don’t do much to help SLP distinguish libraries that may contain unrelated inappropriate language. A safety mode that filters out these words in libraries would go a long way to assisting SLPs’ values.
Conclusion
To wrap up, we learned about AAC devices and their design flaws from a panel of users in order to craft a prototype that incorporates a Value Sensitive Design to solve one issue (lack of customizability for specific words) related to the panelists’ problems. Ella wanted to communicate using words related to SpongeBob and Elena wanted to be able to communicate using a language other than English and Spanish. With these problems and their values in mind, we developed a Figma prototype of a community word library interface for any user to create and share word packages for AAC users to download and use on their AAC devices.
