Teaching Emotions in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder Through a Computer Program With Tangible Interfaces

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) belong to the permanent neurodevelopmental disorders, degrading the areas related to interaction with society, communication as well as behavior. Being the identification of emotions one of the difficulties presented in these people. The present work demonstrates the first exploratory phase showing the development of a computer tool for the understanding of emotions for children with ASD using tangible user interfaces and gamification techniques that is in process. Related works in our area of study are shown indicating our main differentiator with them. Regarding the development of the software, the METUIGA methodology has been used, exposing part of the process followed in the construction of the software. The first preliminary results of a preliminary usability evaluation using the Nielsen heuristic are shown, obtaining positive results in the system interfaces by experts in the education of children with ASD.