Dr Cara Wilson, Centre for Research in Digital Education

This event took place on 11th May 2023.

Abstract

In this talk, Cara describes her work in autism-specific primary school contexts, where she collaboratively explored how to better support the integration of non-verbal and minimally-verbal design contributions into the design process. She will describe the tangible technologies and methodological innovations developed through this work and will also discuss current projects and speculate on new directions for the field of Child-Computer Interaction.

Cara is a Lecturer in Children and Technology and a founding member of the Children, Interaction, and Design Group in the Centre for Research in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh. With a background in Human-Computer Interaction and Psychology, she explores how to better support inclusion and diversity in the development of technologies which pervade children’s lives, for example, working with neurodiverse children in primary school contexts. Through creative, explorative and participatory design methods, her research endeavours to support the strengths, voice, and agency of individuals who are often overlooked in the process of design, particularly the design of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Tangible User Interfaces.

Dr Cara Wilson 

References

Cara Wilson, Laurianne Sitbon, Bernd Ploderer, Jeremy Opie, and Margot Brereton. 2020. Self-Expression by Design: Co-Designing the ExpressiBall with Minimally-Verbal Children on the Autism Spectrum. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376171

Cara Wilson, Roisin McNaney, Abi Roper, Tara Capel, Laura Scheepmaker, Margot Brereton, Stephanie Wilson, David Philip Green, and Jayne Wallace. 2020. Rethinking Notions of 'Giving Voice' in Design. In Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1145/3334480.3375171

Cara Wilson, Margot Brereton, Bernd Ploderer, and Laurianne Sitbon. 2019. Co-Design Beyond Words: 'Moments of Interaction' with Minimally-Verbal Children on the Autism Spectrum. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 21, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300251

Cara Wilson, Margot Brereton, Bernd Ploderer, and Laurianne Sitbon. 2018. MyWord: enhancing engagement, interaction and self-expression with minimally-verbal children on the autism spectrum through a personal audio-visual dictionary. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC '18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 106–118. https://doi.org/10.1145/3202185.3202755  

Cara Wilson, Margot Brereton, Bernd Ploderer, Laurianne Sitbon, and Beth Saggers. 2017. Digital Strategies for Supporting Strengths- and Interests-based Learning with Children with Autism. In Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '17). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 52–61. https://doi.org/10.1145/3132525.3132553