Technologies Supporting Social Play in Neurodiverse Groups of Children

Abstract

This paper reports on the evaluation of digital play things that scaffold social play. We have engaged two neurodiverse groups of children in a participatory design process to explore meaningful technologies in their co-located play experiences. The resulting technologies are systems composed of multiple connected artefacts that aim to strike the balance between structure and ambiguity to allow children to interpret social play in their own way, while providing structures that offer a common frame for interaction. We report on the two systems, MusicPads and LightSpaces, and their comparative and participatory evaluation, in which we assessed the impact of these technologies on the playing experience of children, and collected the children’s own reflections. Our results suggest that technologies indeed can play an important supporting role when designed as boundary objects across disparate needs and ideas of play. Building on this, we discuss implications for design and evaluation.