The following use cases are intended to aid the design of the ecosystem of tools for the Preference for Global Access (PGA) and Cloud for All applications. The goal of these tools is to allow any user to easily activate the settings and preferences they need to access the device they are on and the information they desire. Since users needs are varied and far-ranging, the more flexible and adaptable these tools can be, the better they will achieve the goal.
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Important areas to explore are how do we present different discovery experiences for different users and different goals? What would it look like for a kindergarten student and their teacher, for a new resident of an assisted living facility, for a new immigrant who has limited literacy, etc. What would an independent experience look like vs. an experience with a therapist of care giver helping? How do we integrate and verify the choices we can glean from interfaces or experiences the user identifies as optimal? How do we enable the user to refine their choices?
Dani
Dani loves watching Toronto Blue Jays baseball with her mom and dad, playing fetch with her Golden Retriever Bud, and any kind of game (particularly Connect 4). Dani just turned 18 and just finished school. She is about to move out of her parents' house and into an assisted living and rehabilitation center. Dani is excited about moving out of Mom and Dad's house, is excited about meeting new people at the center, and is a bit nervous about all the change.
Dani experienced a traumatic brain injury when she was 6. She's been going to a special ed school where she had a team of teachers. Her teachers would work with her on a computer set up by the school. The computer had some settings that helped Dani see, read, and understand the content. Though she has some trouble seeing on the right side due to a peripheral vision field cut, Dani enjoys looking at pictures. Her teachers adjusted her lessons to reflect this, so Dani did mostly picture-based learning.
Dani's other activities at school were also tailored to her needs: she is able to read 3-letter words and her vocabulary is at an approximately grade 3 level. Dani is pretty shy about talking because some people have trouble understanding what she's saying, so her teachers would often encourage her to sing. Dani knows almost all the words to "Happy Birthday," and she likes to sing and move her body to the sound – it helps with some of the spasticity in her arms and back, and it makes her happy.
When she moves to the assisted living center, Dani will have a TV and a computer of her own in her own room. Those devices will be different from the TV Dani is used to watching ballgames on and the computer she had configured for her at school. Dani can't take those devices or settings with her so she's going to have to learn a new system. That's stressful, because Dani has some trouble focusing and trouble remembering things like order-of-operations (executive function) tasks.
The assisted living center balances structured therapies (OT, PT, SLP, and computer lab) with recreational activities (cooking class, music class, and outings) and encourages residents to be as independent as they're able to be. Dani will be encouraged to make some decisions. Because the center isn't as structured as Dani's school was, she's going to have more opportunities to decide how she spends her time – how she structures her days and weeks. Dani plans to go home on weekends to visit her Mom and Dad, and Bud too.
Vignettes:
- Dani in "computer lab" working with a therapist to setup GPII
- Dani back in her room applying GPII to her in-room computer
- Dani playing a game (tool 2?)
Possible Needs and Preferences
- slowed down cursor/controls
- text to speech
- large buttons (large target area)
- docked magnification (follows cursor)
- increased allowance for response time
- ability to control speed of audio and video playback
- reminders/breadcrumbs
- globally applied preferences (for all of her favourite games)
Notes:
- this use case could demonstrate the ‘import’ function.
- music therapy has been shown to benefit speech, concentration, physical, and emotional health.
- Links
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One of Marvin’s favorite things to do is to take pictures and video on his iPhone or digital camera. He needs help to upload photos from his digital camera to his iPad, but his iPhone and iPad are synced. He loves to spend time looking through his photos and also enjoys watching videos of himself or of people he knows. Videos are particularly interesting for Marvin, because he enjoys listening to the altered audio when he slows them down or speeds them up.
Scenarios:
Marvin is at science class in the school lab. His teacher, Ms. Frisby is having the class go through a digital open educational resource on electrons. She writes out the website address on the board. Students are paired up in front of computers. Marvin opens the internet browser and types out the website address. Marvin and his pair, Linda, have never been on this site before - curious they start clicking on buttons together.
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Ms. Frisby begins her lesson and instructs the class to read the first section then watch the video. Using the 'speak' option Marvin and Linda find it easy to follow along together and focus on the information. As the students follow along Ms. Frisby goes around to each pair to see how they're engaging with the content and helps out if needed. Ms. Frisby checks on Marvin and Linda and notices the options they've turned on. She asks them how they are enjoying the content. Marvin and Linda are excited and point out that they had no idea they could have the computer speak to them. Ms. Frisby explains to them how they could save these preferences for use in other classrooms or at home using the 'save to cloud' feature.
Possible needs and preferences
- Speak (for listening exercises)
- Simplify (for focus)
- Try something new (for exploration)
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