Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

KitVision toolkit: supporting the creation of cognitive activities for tangible tabletop devices

  • Long Paper
  • Published:
Universal Access in the Information Society Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

This work presents KitVision, a software toolkit based on the End-User Development paradigm to create and to customize tangible tabletop interactive activities for clients with cognitive impairments. The KitVision toolkit has been developed with therapists in mind to engage them in the creation of therapeutic activities, which is the final aim of the work presented here.

Methods

The KitVision toolkit is based on a markup language specially designed to support the definition of cognitive therapeutic activities. It is composed of a graphic assistant, which allows therapists to develop their own activities, and a player, which allows the user to play the activities on a vision-based tangible tabletop. Two different evaluations have been carried out: an in-lab evaluation, that aimed to test the usability of the KitVision toolkit, and a second evaluation, in which an occupational therapist performed the whole process of creating a tangible activity with the toolkit in her workplace.

Results

The in-lab evaluation allowed us to detect and correct some usability problems in the KitVision graphic assistant before the second evaluation in a therapy center. As a result of this second evaluation, the occupational therapist decided to have a tabletop permanently installed in her therapy center.

Conclusions

The potentialities of the KitVision toolkit as an End-User Development tool were assessed after the occupational therapist had spent 1 year using the toolkit on her own, after which she was able to include the activities that she had developed in her daily therapy sessions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13
Fig. 14
Fig. 15
Fig. 16
Fig. 17
Fig. 18
Fig. 19
Fig. 20
Fig. 21
Fig. 22
Fig. 23

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Prince, M., Patel, V., Saxena, S., Maj, M., Maselko, J., Phillips, M.R., et al.: No health without mental health. The lancet 370(9590), 859–877 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Hall, C.B., Lipton, R.B., Sliwinski, M., Katz, M.J., Derby, C.A., Verghese, J.: Cognitive activities delay onset of memory decline in persons who develop dementia. Neurology 73(5), 356–361 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Reichman, W.E., Fiocco, A.J., Rose, N.S.: Exercising the brain to avoid cognitive decline: examining the evidence. Aging Health 6(5), 565–584 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Labouvie-Vief, G., Gonda, J.N.: Cognitive strategy training and intellectual performance in the elderly. Journal of Gerontology 31(3), 327–332 (1976)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Edwards, J.D., Wadley, V.G., Vance, D.E., Wood, K., Roenker, D.L., Ball, K.K.: The impact of speed of processing training on cognitive and everyday performance. Aging & mental health 9(3), 262–271 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Söderback, I.: (2009) Occupational Therapy: Emphasis on Clinical Practice. Springer New York, pp. 13–35

  7. Ball, K., Berch, D., Helmers, K., et al.: Effect of cognitive training interventions with older adults: a randomized control trial. JAMA 288(18), 2271–2281 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Gates, N., Valenzuela, M.: Cognitive exercise and its role in cognitive function in older adults. Current Psychiatry Reports 12(1), 20–27 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Loureiro, B., Rodrigues, R.: (2011) Multi-touch as a Natural User Interface for elders: A survey. In Information Systems and Technologies 6th Iberian Conference (CISTI’11), Chaves, Portugal, June 2011, pp. 1–6

  10. Kaltenbrunner, M., Bencina, R.: (2007) reacTIVision: a computer-vision framework for table-based tangible interaction. In Proceedings of the first international conference on Tangible and embedded interaction (TEI’07), Baton Rouge, Louisiana, February 2007, pp. 69–74

  11. Moraiti, A., Abeele, V.V., Vanroye, E., Geurts, L.: (2015) Empowering occupational therapists with a DIY-toolkit for smart soft objects. Proceedings of the ninth international conference on Tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction (TEI’15) California, United States, January 2015, pp. 387–394

  12. Lazar, A., Edasis, C., Piper, A.M.: (2017) Supporting People with Dementia in Digital Social Sharing. Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’17), Denver, CO, USA, May 2017, pp. 2149–2162

  13. Iwata, T., Yamabe, T., Poloj, M., Nakajima, T.: (2010) Traditional games meet ICT: a case study on go game augmentation. In Proceedings of the fourth international conference on Tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction (TEI’10) Zadar, Croatia, November 2010, pp. 237–240

  14. Marco, J., Cerezo, E., Baldassarri, S.: Bringing tabletop technology to all: evaluating a tangible farm game with kindergarten and special needs children. Pers. Ubiquit. Comput. 17(8), 1577–1591 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Li, Y., Fontijn, W., Markopoulos, P.: (2008) A tangible tabletop game supporting therapy of children with cerebral palsy. In: Markopoulos P, Ruyter B, Ijsselsteijn W, Rowland D (eds) Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on fun and games. Springer, Berlin, pp. 182–193

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  16. Gamberini, L., Alcaniz, M., Barresi, G., Fabregat, M., Ibanez, F., Prontu, L.: Cognition, technology and games for the elderly: an introduction to ELDERGAMES project. PsychNology Journal 4, 285–308 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Leitner, M., Tomitsch, M., Költringer, T.K., Kappel, K., Greshenig, T.: (2007) Designing tangible tabletop interfaces for patients in rehabilitation. In Proceedings of Conference & Workshop on Assistive Technologies for People with Vision and Hearing Impairments: Assistive Technology for All Ages. M. Hersh (Eds.), Granada, Spain, August 2007, pp. 1–7

  18. Lieberman, H., Paternò, F., Klann, M., Wulf, V.: (2006) End-User Development: An Emerging Paradigm. In Lieberman H, Paternò F, Wulf V (eds) End User Development. Springer Netherlands, pp. 1–8

  19. Marco, J., Baldassarri, S., Cerezo, E.: NIKVision: Developing a Tangible Application for and with Children. Journal of Universal Computer Science 19(15), 2266–2291 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Marco, J., Cerezo, E., Baldassarri, S.: (2010) Playing with toys on a tabletop active surface. In: Proceedings of the ninth international conference on interaction design and children (IDC’10), Barcelona, Spain, June 2010, pp. 296–299

  21. Marco, J., Cerezo, E., Baldassarri, S.: (2014) Lowering the threshold and raising the ceiling of tangible expressiveness in hybrid board-games. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 1–39

  22. Boyd, L.E., Ringland, K.E., Haimson, O.L., Fernandez, H., Bistarkey, M., Hayes, G.R.: Evaluating a collaborative iPad game’s impact on social relationships for children with autism spectrum disorder. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS) 7(1), 3 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Sobel, K., Rector, K., Evans, S., Kientz, J.A.: (2016) Incloodle: evaluating an interactive application for young children with mixed abilities. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’16) San Jose, United States, May 2016, pp. 165–176

  24. Marshall, P.: (2007) Do tangible interfaces enhance learning?. In Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Tangible and embedded interaction (TEI’07). ACM, Baton Rouge, LA, USA, February 2007, pp. 163–170

  25. Correa, A.G.D., de Assis, G.A., Nascimento, M.D., Ficheman, I., Lopes, R.D.D.: Genvirtual: An augmented reality musical game for cognitive and motor rehabilitation. In: Virtual Rehabilitation, 2007, pp. 1–6. Venice 2007, IEEE (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Kientz, J., Boring, S., Abowd, G., Hayes, G.: (2005) Abaris: Evaluating automated capture applied to structured autism interventions. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2005), 323–339

    Google Scholar 

  27. De la Guía, E., Lozano, M.D., Penichet, V.R.: (2013) Cognitive rehabilitation based on collaborative and tangible computer games. In: Proceedings of the 7th International Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare (PervasiveHealth’13), Venice, Italy, May 2013, pp. 389–392

  28. Dillenbourg, P., Evans, M.: Interactive tabletops in education. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 6(4), 491–514 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Kwon, G.H., Kim, L., Park, S.: (2013) Development of a cognitive assessment tool and training systems for elderly cognitive impairment. In 7th International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare (PervasiveHealth’13), Venice, Italy, May 2013, pp. 450–452

  30. Project, S.: http://www.cognitivetraining.eu/ (accessed 16.08.2017)

  31. Ullmer, B., Ishii, H.: Emerging frameworks for tangible user interfaces. IBM systems journal 39(3), 915–931 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Ballagas, R., Ringel, M., Stone, M., Borchers, J.: (2003) iStuff: a physical user interface toolkit for ubiquitous computing environments. In: Proceedings of the conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI’03), Fort Lauderdale, Florida, April 2003, pp. 537–544

  33. Greenberg, S., Fitchett, C.: (2001) Phidgets: easy development of physical interfaces through physical widgets. In: Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM symposium on user interface software and technology (UIST’01), Orlando, Florida, November 2001, pp. 209–218

  34. Klemmer, S.R., Li, J., Lin, J., Landay, J.A.: (2004) Papier-Mâché: toolkit support for tangible interaction. In: Proceedings of the ACM conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI’04), Vienna, Austria, April 2004, pp. 399–406

  35. Carmien, S.P., Fischer, G.: (2008) Design, adoption, and assessment of a socio-technical environment supporting independence for persons with cognitive disabilities. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’08), Florence, Italy, April 2008, pp. 597–606

  36. Becker, E., Metsis, V., Arora, R., Vinjumur, J., Xu, Y., Makedon, F.: (2009) SmartDrawer: RFID-based smart medicine drawer for assistive environments. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments (PETRA’09), Corfu, Greece, June 2009, pp. 49

  37. Piper, A.M., Weibel, N., Hollan, J.D.: Write-n-speak: authoring multimodal digital-paper materials for speech-language therapy. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS) 4(1), 2 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  38. Tetteroo, D., Vreugdenhil, P., Grisel, I., Michielsen, M., Kuppens, E., Vanmulken, D., Markopoulos, P.: (2015) Lessons Learnt from Deploying an End-User Development Platform for Physical Rehabilitation. Proceedings of the ACM conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI’15), Seoul, Republic of Korea, April 2015, pp. 4133–4142

  39. Poutouris, E., Korozi, M., Leonidis, A., Louloudakis, N., Stephanidis, C.: (2017) ConstrAct: an educator-oriented design studio for ambient educational games. In Proceedings of the 9th Annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (pp. 8475–8484). Barcelona, Spain: IATED Academy

  40. Mehler, J.: (1996) Cognition: International Journal of Cognitive Science. Elsevier Science

  41. Hochreiter, S., Schmidhuber, J.: Long short-term memory. Neural computation 9(8), 1735–1780 (1997)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. Sarter, M., Givens, B., Bruno, J.P.: The cognitive neuroscience of sustained attention: where top-down meets bottom-up. Brain Res Rev 35(2), 146–160 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  43. Evans, J.S.B.: In two minds: dual-process accounts of reasoning. Trends in cognitive sciences 7(10), 454–459 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Evans, J.S.B., Newstead, S.E., Byrne, R.M.: (1993) Human reasoning: The psychology of deduction. Psychology Press

  45. Bos, B., Lie, H.W., Lilley, C., Jacobs, I.: (1998) Cascading Style Sheets, level 2, CSS2 Specification, W3C Recommendation

  46. Mozilla, XUL Language Spec, 2nd draft (1999)

  47. Coenraets, C.: (2004) An overview of MXML: The Flex markup language. Adobe Systems

  48. Abrams, M., Phanouriou, C., Batongbacal, A.L., Williams, S.M., Shuster, J.E.: UIML: an appliance-independent XML user interface language. Comput Netw 3(11–16), 1695–1708 (1999)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. Robertson, G.L., Hix, D.: Making the computer accessible to mentally retarded adults. Commun ACM 45(4), 171–183 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  50. Kaltenbrunner, M.. Bovermann, T., Bencina, R., Costanza, E.: (2005) TUIO: A protocol for table-top tangible user interfaces. In: Proceedings of the 6th Int’l Workshop on Gesture in Human-Computer Interaction and Simulation, pp. 1–5

  51. Bonillo, C., Baldassarri, S., Marco, J., Cerezo, E.: (2017) Tackling developmental delays with therapeutic activities based on tangible tabletops. Univ. Access Inf. Soc., 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-017-0582-4

    Article  Google Scholar 

  52. Tetteroo, D., Soute, I., Markopoulos, P.: (2013) Five key challenges in end-user development for tangible and embodied interaction. In Proceedings of the 15th ACM on International conference on multimodal interaction, pp. 247–254

  53. Nielsen, J.: (1994) Enhancing the explanatory power of usability heuristics. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 152–158

  54. Nielsen, J.: (2000) Why you only need to test with 5 users. [Online]. Available: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to-test-with-5-users/

  55. Bastien, J.C.: Usability testing: a review of some methodological and technical aspects of the method. International journal of medical informatics 79(4), e18–e23 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  56. Bevan, N.: Usability is quality of use. Advances in human factors ergonomics 20, 349–349 (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  57. Scapin, D., Law, E.L.C.: (2007) Review, report and refine usability evaluation methods (R3UEMs). In COST 294-MAUSE 3rd International Workshop

  58. Vermeeren, A.P., Law, E.L.C., Roto, V., Obrist, M., Hoonhout, J., Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila, K.: (2010) User experience evaluation methods: current state and development needs. In Proceedings of the 6th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Extending Boundaries, pp. 521–530

Download references

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank María, Teresa and Ana Cristina, the three therapists who participated in the in-lab evaluation, all the staff of ASAPME Huesca, and Estela, who is currently using KitVision and NIKVision in her therapies. This work has been partly financed by the Spanish Government and the European Union through the contract TIN2015-67149-C3-1R (MINECO/FEDER), and by the Aragonese Government and the European Union through the FEDER 2014–2020 “Construyendo Europa desde Aragón” action (Group T25_17D).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Advanced Interfaces Group (Affective Lab), Computer Science Department, Universidad de Zaragoza, Ed. Ada Byron, C/María de Luna n. 1, 50015, Zaragoza, Spain

    Clara Bonillo

  2. Escuela Superior de Diseño de Aragón, C/ María Zambrano, n. 3, 50018, Zaragoza, Spain

    Javier Marco

  3. Advanced Interfaces Group (Affective Lab), Computer Science Department, Engineering Research Institute of Aragon (I3A), Universidad de Zaragoza, Ed. Ada Byron, C/María de Luna n. 1, 50015, Zaragoza, Spain

    Sandra Baldassarri & Eva Cerezo

Authors
  1. Clara Bonillo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Javier Marco
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Sandra Baldassarri
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Eva Cerezo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Clara Bonillo.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bonillo, C., Marco, J., Baldassarri, S. et al. KitVision toolkit: supporting the creation of cognitive activities for tangible tabletop devices. Univ Access Inf Soc 19, 361–389 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-019-00644-3

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-019-00644-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation