Insights from user testing of Jellow: A communication aid for children with developmental disabilities

Abstract

The current paper reports insights from user testing of a novel pictorial, free-of-cost, desktop-based communication aid, Jellow, developed at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay to enhance communication in nonverbal to minimally verbal children with developmental disabilities. We asked 7 typically developing school-age children to use the Jellow application to convey specific messages based on test scenarios during a structured usability evaluation. We coded for task success, time to completion, number of errors made, and number of prompts required for completing each of the ten test tasks. We also collected qualitative data on children’s satisfaction with various aspects of the application and their feedback on ways to improve the application. Quantitative and qualitative feedback from this study is currently being used to develop the next version of the application that will be tested with children with disabilities.