Designing a Learning Toy for Children with Constructional Dyspraxia to Improve Their Visual Intelligence

Abstract

Designing for both typical and atypical groups is pivotal for achieving inclusivity. Atypical groups mainly include children with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, and dysgraphia. Dyspraxia is one of the toughest atypical groups to regulate in a normal classroom, as they are kinetic and tactile learners. In the current scenario, a reinforcement technique is used to teach them subjects like geometry where they are shown shapes or figures and the composition is memorized. This can impart short-term memory but would not improve visual intelligence in identifying other objects. No significant changes have been introduced for the learning and evaluation of these children, and for improving their visual intelligence, hence, there is a severe need for design intervention in this area. One of the important questions asked was, how can we devise a learning technique for children suffering from dyspraxia and improve their visual intelligence? The main objective of this research is to find out a technique to help children understand spatial relationships between different objects, construct them and track their visual intelligence in accordance with the same. With the research findings, a learning toy named “Tomo” has been devised that uses glyph-based visualization to improve the overall shape and form comprehensibility. It is also equipped with intelligent assistance through a mobile application that would allow the parents and teachers to track the improvement in children.