Emogym
Autism is a severe and widespread childhood neurological disorder, and the number of patients is increasing year by year (Zhang et al., 2021). Children with autism spectrum condition (ASC) are born with challenges in recognising and expressing facial emotions (Harms et al., 2010), as they have severe developmental impairments in emotion regulation (Lecciso et al., 2021). Although there are many apps to help rehabilitate children with autism, research has shown that most of these train facial muscles and emotion recognition, with only few measures focusing on improving facial emotion recognition and expression (Lecciso et al., 2021).
Therefore, our problem space is how to design an affordable AI-based system to help train children with autism in daily facial expression recognition and expression.
Features
Emogym includes 4 emotions (Angry, Sad, Happy, Fear), each with 3 different expressions(12 expressions in total), 4 animated character gifs, descriptive texts and songs for music therapy for emotions. Facial expression detection also provided for the generation of user training status scores.
Why Emogym?
Why Emogym?
The goal of our concept are to solve the following problems:
Children with ASC have difficulties recognising and expressing facial emotions, significantly affecting their ability to communicate.
It takes a long time for children with ASC to build trust with others and be trained to talk.
The cost of treatment for autism is so high that many families have to forgo treatment for their children.
There is a lack of interventions for facial emotion recognition and expression training in the market.
Emogym's design style focuses on rich colours and cute cartoon images. Research has shown that children with autism are more attracted to rich colours. They also show more patience and interest when confronted with cartoons. Cartoons also help children with autism to focus quickly and without stress (Pathak, 2021). When the user clicks on start, soothing music is played on the web to help the child focus.
In this interface, the user is given open-ended questions, assuming many different scenarios in life, and is asked to pick the emotion they want to express based on these questions. In this way, we hope that children with autism will be able to relate the different emotions to real-life scenarios and thus train their social skills.
The four options represent the four basic emotions (happiness, fear, sadness and anger) represented by cartoon pictures. Research has shown that pictures can help children with autism learn to communicate better than words(Pathak, 2021).
Once the user has selected the emotion he wants to express, they will be taken to the training page, where a cartoon image on the left side of the screen will show how to express an emotion, with a text description at the top. Then, the user has to mimic the expression to exercise the facial muscles and express the emotion.
During the imitation process, the AI will evaluate the level of imitation in the background and comment. When the user successfully mimics the emoji will appear around their face with the corresponding emotion, and they will be reminded to click the following button on their phone to move on to the next question.
Design Concept
Context of use 1
Who
Children with Autism, Parents - The family is the child's first classroom, and the parents are the child's first teacher. For children with autism, combination of Emogym and family education to train children on facial expressions.
Where
Family- Children spend the most time at home with their parents, and parents know their children better than others. Parents can reasonably arrange their children's limited time at home, and use Emogym to devote more time to facial expression training.
Device
Mobile phone, TV with camera，iPad
Satisfied user needs
The cost of treatment for autism is too high that many families have to abandon treatment for their children (Zhang et al., 2021). Emogym allows children to be treated at home to reduce costs.
Emogym helps parents act as their child's therapist so that the child feels comfortable and natural during the treatment.
Context of use 2
Who
Children with Autism, Autism Rehabilitation Center- Children with Autism are more relaxed when facing a machine than when facing a real person, so Emogym can be used as a training course at the Rehabilitation.
Where
Autism Rehabilitation Center- Some children with severe autism will go to a rehabilitation center for treatment. Emogym is available as an inexpensive course tool for training with therapists.
Device
Mobile phone, TV with camera，Laptop
Satisfied user needs
After investigation, there is a lack of interventions available for facial emotion recognition and expression training (Lecciso et al., 2021). Emogym can be used as a training tool for therapists to accompany therapy.
Children with autism are more comfortable with machine than with a therapist.
As an inexpensive treatment experience at the Autism Rehabilitation Center, it can be accepted by more families who cannot rehabilitate at home.