Our paper on the design of a mobile tool based on the Social Compass Curriculum was accepted for publication at this year’s Ubicomp conference. The citation and abstract are below…. look for the camera ready version of the paper to show up on our publications page as soon as it is done.

Tentori, M. and Hayes, G.R.  Designing for Interaction Immediacy to Enhance Social Skills of Children with Autism To Appear Proc Ubicomp 2010. Copenhagen, Denmark. September 26-29, 2010.

Abstract:

Children with autism often require therapeutic interventions to support engagement in effective social interactions in different contexts. In this paper, we present the results of a study conducted in three public schools that use an educational and behavioral intervention for the instruction of social skills in changing situational contexts and ongoing social interactions. The results of this study led to the concept of interaction immediacy to help children maintain appropriate spatial boundaries, reply to conversation initiators, disengage appropriately at the end of an interaction, and identify potential communication partners. We describe design principles for Ubicomp technologies to support interaction immediacy and present an example design. The contribution of this work is twofold. First, we present an understanding of social skills in mobile and dynamic contexts. Second, we introduce the concept of interaction immediacy and show its effectiveness as a guiding principle for the design of Ubicomp applications.