Friendship Space

description

Friendship Space is an educational tablet application that teaches perspective taking skills to children with autism. This application was inspired by an existing strategy called “Memory Files,” which was developed by Michelle Garcia Winner, a renowned psychologist in the field.  In this strategy, students draw brain maps of their friends and fill in each brain with the corresponding friend’s interests. They ask various questions to the peer, and record the answers on the map. Later on, they are advised to look and use information from the memory files to create social conversations with their friends. This process helps the children visualize others’ worlds of interest, making it easier for them to understand the fact that each person has a different point of view. 

Our client, POPARD (Provincial Outreach Program for Autism and Related Disorders), sees the growing demand for great educational strategies like Memory Files to be available on the mobile and digital platform. It is also reported that some students with autism showed higher level of achievement when they learned through tablet devices. In addition, there is a great room for improvement in the existing mobile applications, especially in terms of their graphic quality and the interface flow.

Friendship Space takes all of these opportunities and strives to enhance the learning outcome of the existing educational strategy. The brain maps become planets floating in the space, which creates not only a beautiful interface, but also a visual metaphor to the vast worlds of interest. The rewarding system is customizable, which caters to each child’s restricted interest. The educators will have access to their students’ progress and settings from their own devices, which would allow them to use this app as a teaching tool in the most effective way for each learner.