Assistive Computing: A Human-Centered Approach to Developing Computing Support for Cognition

The growing population of cognitively impaired individuals calls for the emergence of a research area dedicated to developing computing systems that address their needs. The nature of this research area requires to bridge the many disciplines needed to develop human-centered, assistive computing systems. Such bridging may seem unattainable considering the conceptual and practical gaps between the related disciplines and the challenges of propagating human-related concerns throughout the many stages of the development process of assistive technologies. As a consequence, existing assistive technologies lack a proper needs analysis; their development is often driven by technology concerns, resulting in ill-designed and stereotype-biased systems; and, most of them are not tested for their effectiveness in assisting users. In this paper, we propose a systematic exploration of this vast challenge. First, we define Assistive Computing as a research area and propose key principles to drive its study. Then, we introduce a tool-based methodology dedicated to developing assistive computing support, integrating a range of disciplines from human-related sciences to computer science. This methodology is purposefully pragmatic in that it leverages, aggregates and revisits numerous research results, concretizing it with a range of examples. More generally, our goal is i) to provide a framework to conduct research in the area of Assistive Computing and ii) to identify the necessary bridges between disciplines to account for all the dimensions of such systems.