Designing A Virtual Talking Companion to Support the Social-Emotional Learning of Children with ASD
Isser Troy Mangin Gagan, Maria Angela Mikaela Eusebio Matias, Ivy Tan, Christianne Marie Vinco, Ethel Ong, Ron R. Resurreccion · Interaction Design and Children · 2022
Conversational agents’ ability to communicate in natural language through voice and text interfaces poses an opportunity in helping children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) develop their social communication skills. In this paper, we describe the design of Amy, a conversational agent that explains social situations to help guide a child in understanding when to use socially appropriate behavior. A breathing exercise feature for emotion regulation is activated when a negative emotion is detected from the child’s input. Interviews with parents and a child psychologist informed the design of Amy as well as the 12 social stories themes that Amy shares with children. Interview inputs and previous works suggested four design considerations for social-emotional learning companions to facilitate better interaction by including relevant social story themes, formulating open-domain conversation flow, incorporating appropriate and guided emotion regulation exercise, and using lively visual user interface.