2024
by Jianan Johanna Liu, Yuqi Song, Danlin Huang
Overview
Foldiverse is an AR game-based solution that transforms paper folding into an interactive virtual life, specifically designed for children with autism. Recognizing the challenges parents face due to the lack of professional special education training, Foldiverse offers paper folding tutorials and real-time interactive feedback. This gamification approach not only stimulates children's interest but also enables parents to easily facilitate training at home. User experiments have demonstrated that Foldiverse significantly increases children's engagement and anticipation, offering a more gamified and family-inclusive method for autism rehabilitation.Foldiverse’s Content Showcase
Foldiverse
Fold+diverse+universe
Create a diverse universe with paper folding.
通过折纸创造一个多样的世界。
Create a diverse universe with paper folding.
通过折纸创造一个多样的世界。
UX Perspective
Introduction
With the improvement of medical care and public awareness of autism, rehabilitation training for children with autism has received increasing attention. This rehabilitation training specifically includes three major modules: sensory intervention, language intervention, and behavioural intervention.
Research has shown that paper folding training has a significant positive impact on the behavioral intervention of children with autism. However, due to their limited attention span, children with autism often face challenges such as lack of motivation and difficulty in maintaining long-term paper folding training.
In hospitals or professional autism rehabilitation centres, therapists usually set up a variety of classroom games to mobilise children's interest, and gradually guide and motivate them to complete the training tasks. However, due to the global shortage of rehabilitation resources, some families of children with autism cannot afford the expensive treatment costs of hospitals and specialized institutions. Therefore, many families opt for home intervention. Parents of children with autism, lacking professional training in special education, encounter numerous problems when attempting home intervention, including:
Children unable to focus on paper folding training: The unique characteristics of children with autism make it difficult for them to concentrate on repetitive and monotonous training for long periods.
Parents unable to provide scientific guidance: Parents without professional knowledge cannot effectively guide their children through scientific lesson planning and designing training games.
Therefore, we attempt to utilize augmented reality (AR) technology to create a game application installed on wearable AR glasses. This application provides engaging origami tutorials and real-time feedback, gamifying the paper folding activity. With Foldiverse, parents do not need professional rehabilitation training knowledge or to design interesting games themselves to guide their children; they can simply accompany their children at home to complete paper folding training.
We propose two design strategies:
We recruited 12 families with children aged 3-7 with autism to participate in offline classes at the Xiamen Maternal and Child Health Hospital and evaluate the effectiveness of our solution. The study confirmed that Foldiverse can increase children's enthusiasm through gamified training and help parents of children with autism effectively accompany their children in rehabilitation training.
Our main contributions include:
Metadata
Media: Headworn ARTechnologies: Rokid Headset, Unity3D