Towards tangible and distributed UI for cognitively impaired people

Abstract

Tangible systems are used for cognitively impaired persons to support activation of users’ cognitive processes and to facilitate the understanding of according tasks. Motivated by the research results, a combined tangible and distributed user interface was realized by means of which users can navigate through and interact with a web form. The work is based on an existing accessible web form (AWF) that is to be filled out cooperatively by cognitively impaired and by cognitively non-impaired people assisting them. As proof-of-concept, Sifteo cubes were used that enable the user to interact with a system by pressing a cube’s display, by tilting, shaking or flipping a cube, or by placing cubes side by side. In terms of an inclusive design the resulting AWF-Cube prototype was developed and evaluated by a user test with cognitively impaired people. They judged the use of the cubes to be simple although some problems were encountered. The results indicate that the participants understood the navigation and interaction concepts and do not have problems in switching their attention between the AWF main interface and the cubes at the right time.