Designing location-based learning experiences for people with intellectual disabilities and additional sensory impairments

The research reported here is part of a larger project which seeks to combine serious games (or games-based learning) with location-based services to help people with intellectual disabilities and additional sensory impairments to develop work based skills. Specifically this paper reports on where these approaches are combined to scaffold the learning of new routes and ultimately independent travel to new work and educational opportunities. A phased development methodology is applied in a user sensitive manner, to ensure that user feedback drives the ongoing development process. Methods to structure this include group feedback on conceptual storyboards, expert review of prototypes using usability heuristics relating to the main system goals, and finally co-discovery methods with student pairs exploring all three modes of the system in real world contexts. Aspects of developmental and cognitive psychological theories are also reviewed and it is suggested that combining games-based learning approaches with location-based services is an appropriate combination of technologies for an application specifically designed to scaffold route learning for this target audience.

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