Shumeng Hou and Huicong Hu Receives the A' Design Award for Robot Partner Autistic Children Training App in Education, Teaching Aid and Training Content Design

Shumeng Hou and Huicong Hu recognized for education, teaching aid and training content design by the international grand jury of the 2020 - 2021 A' Design Award & Competition

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

COMO, Italy, April 23, 2021 /DesignNewswire/ Robot Partner Autistic Children Training App by Shumeng Hou and Huicong Hu, designed for Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, has been granted the A' Design Award in the Education, Teaching Aid and Training Content Design category, A' Design Award & Competition has announced. The recognition forms part of the 2020 - 2021 A' Design Award & Competition and was decided through blind peer review by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members, who scored anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.

About the A' Design Award

The Iron A' Design Award is awarded to good designs that meet the rigorous professional and industrial standards set by the A' Design Awards. This recognition is reserved for works that demonstrate a solid understanding of design principles and show creativity within their execution. Recipients of the Iron A' Design Award are acknowledged for their practical innovations and contributions to their respective fields, providing solutions that improve quality of life and foster positive change. These designs are a testament to the skill and dedication of their creators, showcasing their ability to address real-world challenges through thoughtful design.

Regarding Robot Partner Autistic Children Training App

Robot Partner is a mobile application designed to train the social and emotional skills of children with autism spectrum disorder aged four to six. Research has shown that autistic children are often more interested in communicating with robots than with people. A virtual robot character guides each child through the training activities. The application is organized in three modules: Speech and Gesture, Emotion, and Social Interaction. The modules cover daily dialogues and gestures, emotional expression, and complex social scenes. The design aims to make professional training easier to reach.

Award Record

With this recognition, Shumeng Hou and Huicong Hu is a winner of 1 A' Design Award.

About the A' Education, Teaching Aid and Training Content Design Award

The A' Education Design Award is an international competition recognizing good education products and projects by leading designers and brands worldwide. It is organized within the A' Design Award & Competition and is open to education designers, teaching aid designers, training content creators and curriculum developers from all countries. Typical entries include textbooks, e-learning platforms, educational games, training manuals, instructional videos and interactive whiteboards. The awarded education designs are published at https://dezigners.org/design-category/education

About A' Design Award & Competition

Organized annually since 2008, A' Design Award & Competition is an international, juried design accolade. The competition is open to entries from all countries. The philanthropic mission of the A' Design Award is to advance society through good design, by recognizing and promoting superior products, projects and services that benefit society, and by creating a global awareness and appreciation for good design practices and principles. Nominations are peer reviewed and evaluated anonymously by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members against predetermined criteria such as functionality, ergonomics, engineering, presentation, innovation, usability, sustainability and technology, with score normalization applied to remove biases. Awards are conferred at Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron levels. Eligible laureates receive the A' Design Prize, which includes the award trophy, the certificate of design excellence, the hardcover yearbook, a lifetime license to use the A' Design Award winner logo, exhibition of awarded works, an invitation to the gala night and award ceremony in Italy, inclusion in the World Design Rankings and Designer Rankings, and public relations and publicity services. Registration, uploading a work and receiving a preliminary score are free of charge, and Professional and Digital Edition laureates are not contractually obliged to pay further fees to claim the A' Design Prize. More information is available at https://competition.adesignaward.com

Press Resources

Winner Page: https://dezigners.org/108295
A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/108295
Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!108295
Laureate Profile: https://dezigners.org/d/281520

Media Contact

Giulia Ferrari, Press Office
Designers.Org
Via Leone Leoni 32, 22100 Como, Italy
press@designers.org
+39 031 4491953

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Fact Sheet

The Work

Project: Robot Partner Autistic Children Training App
Function: Autistic Children Training App
Category: Education, Teaching Aid and Training Content Design
Discipline: Service Design
Industry: Education
Colors: Sea Green, Pale Goldenrod, Forest Green, Maroon and Medium Sea Green
Images: 5
Client: Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen

The Recognition

Laureate: Shumeng Hou and Huicong Hu
Country: China
Recognition: A' Design Award
Edition: 2020 - 2021
Design ID: #108295

Credits

Team: Shumeng Hou, Huicong Hu and Chengbo Zhao
Image Credits: Images by Shumeng Hou, Huicong Hu, 2020

Design Details

Unique Properties: Robot Partner is a training mobile App aiming at improving the social and emotional skills for autistic children between 4 to- 6- year old. Previous studies have found that comparing to interacting with people in the real world, autistic children are more interested in communicating with robots (Dautenhahn and Werry, 2004). In addition, a growing number of studies have found that using a social robot to assist autistic children is a potentially useful area of research (David, Costescu, Matu, Szentagotai, and Dobrean, 2018; Wood, Zarakl, Robins, and Dautenhahn, 2019).
Inspiration: Autism Spectrum Disorder (autism) is a pervasive developmental disorder characterized by severe, widespread social interactive problems and impairments in communicating skills. About 1 in 54 children has been identified with autism in the United States. The lack of professional therapists, especially in developing countries, and the high costs cause great difficulties for families with autistic children in getting enough and professional interventions.
Research: The present App was designed based on two research projects from the designers. One is an intervening study supported by Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of National Ministry of Education in China (Id: 17YJC190006), the other one is a neural imaging study supported by Shenzhen Natural Science Foundation. Specifically, in the brain imaging research project, we aimed at investigating the neural evidence regarding 45 autistic children’s atypical interests in interacting with robots comparing to interacting with people. This is the theoretical foundation of developing an image of robot in the training App.
Challenge: Among the whole process of designing, there are two challenges and obstacles that we overcame. First, the target users of the product are special young children. Second, we need to guarantee the effects of the training system before it is applied into the App program. Therefore, on the one hand, the content of the training App needs to be professional and suitable to the above group of people. On the other hand, the whole intervening system which takes two months need to be implemented on at least thirty autistic children to make sure of the effectiveness. We have solved the above obstacles based on two research projects during the past three years.
Realization and Technology: The App was designed mainly based on a systematical intervening program of autistic children’s social and emotional skills. The intervening program is developed based on research findings of a national research project from one of the designers in our team. In the neural imaging of the above projects, autistic children showed significant difference in the activation of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex when they were watching a robot interacting with them comparing to when they were interacting with a person. Such difference was not found in typical developing children.
Operation and Interaction: Robot Partner consists of modules of Speech and Gesture, Emotion, and Social Interaction to support the training based on common social dialogues and gestures, emotion expression, and comprehensive social communication between the robot partner and autistic children. In the module of Speech& and Gesture, the meaning of basic speech utterances and gestures in social interpersonal context are introduced. From this module, children are expected to understand the basic communicating dialogs in the daily life. In the module of Emotion, different types of human emotions in various situations are introduced.
Project Duration and Location: The project started in February 2019 and finished in July 2020 in Shenzhen.
Specifications: Designed for iOS System
Keywords: Interface Design, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Speech and Gesture, Emotion, Social Interaction