Model Playground for Autistic Children: Teaching Social Skills through Tangible Collaboration

Children with autism often have difficulties in learning the social skills and norms of peer social interaction, which severely affect and limit their social lives. Aiming at addressing this issue, through design, we developed a digital-analogue model playground to help them understand and cope with the socially difficult situations experienced when they go to a physical playground to interact with peers. Based on therapists and parents' insights, we created the model playground with built in collaborative protocols providing immediate feedback to the children in terms of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. Our design artefact was evaluated in a rehabilitation clinic for autistic children and demonstrates promising potential for digital-analogue devices as useful resources training peer social interaction. Our findings document that digital-analogue design devices can facilitate the development of social skills and norms through peer learning activities amongst children with autism.