Prototyping and Interface Design of an Automated Screening Test to Evaluate the Linguistic Processing Abilities of School Children

Abstract

The performance of Brazilian students in reading tests, both national and international, have been worrisome lately. However, it is widely known that fluency in reading is essential for both personal growth and national development. In this study, we present a prototype of a digital system platform, based on a UCD (User Centered Design) approach, to detect language impediments that can negatively impact literacy acquisition in schoolchildren. This system is based on a battery of tests created earlier by one of the authors (Leonor Scliar-Cabral). The initial results indicate that this digital system has the potential to improve on the original tests battery, making it more effective and easy to deploy, with the promise to help improve the competence and reading fluency of Brazilian elementary school students.

1 Introduction

Brazilian students perform poorly in reading tests, both domestic and international (PISA - Program for International Student Assessment). Sadly, the most recent results from the PISA do not show a trend towards improvement and the number of low performance students is about half the sample [8]. Since poor reading performance has long-term negative impacts on both individuals and nations, something effective has to be done if the country wants to level the playing field for its citizens and allow the social inclusion of traditionally marginalized sectors of its society. While the task is not easy, one alternative is to make use of new Technologies, such as digital games, to effectively engage children and teenagers during screening and intervention.

The main goal of this study is to develop a screening test to detect possible language problems of Brazilian schoolchildren to be assessed by specialists. The test is designed to be used in the school setting administered by teachers with the minimal amount of training. The test will be deployed in the form of a computational system based on commercially available portable operating systems, such as the Android or iOS systems. It’s our intention that this system could be helpful in detecting possible language impediments that can prevent early literacy acquisition in Brazilian schoolchildren to be assessed by specialists. Specifically, we intend to, after the assessement by specialists: (1) allow the early identification of difficulties in language skills; (2) offer more detailed information to both parents and teachers about the nature and extension of these difficulties; (3) help designing individually tailored intervention measures. The system will be based on scientifically proven methods and will include a battery of 9 tests [2]:

• (1) Auditory Reception: evaluates the perception of phonemic distinction of words;

• (2) Phrase comprehension: evaluates working memory’s capacity;

• (3) Oral production of items: evaluates the precision of phono-articulatory expression;

• (4) Oral production of phrases: evaluates fluency of oral production;

• (5) Phrase pairing: evaluates perception of grapheme contrasts in minimal pairs;

• (6) Grapheme-to-phoneme: uses pseudowords to evaluate understanding of relationships between graphemes and phonemes;

• (7) Phoneme-to-grapheme: uses pseudowords to evaluate understanding of relationships between graphemes and phonemes;

• (8) Oral reading: evaluates fluency;

• (9) Reading Comprehension: evaluates understanding of the text.

The system will be composed of two interfaces: one for the children and another for the examiner. In the examiner’s interface, test results will be displayed in real-time in graphic format and there will be the option to log comments. Depending on the individual scores obtained, the system will indicate whether the child needs to be referenced to a specialist for further professional evaluation. In the children’s interface the tests will be deployed using a gamified narrative, with the help of cartoon characters.

The present work will describe the development of a paper prototype using the following techniques: (1) prototyping on paper; (2) high-resolution prototyping. The prototype will be used in a pilot experiment to obtain user feedback about the interface, including opinions about interaction dynamics and aesthetics. Paper prototyping is a variation of usability testing where selected users perform realistic tasks by interacting with a paper version of the interface that is manipulated by a person “playing computer”, who doesn’t explain how the interface is intended to work [6].

Following the definition of screen design and interface elements, the material was printed on paper and cut to allow the moderator to present the elements in response to the intention manifested by the participants while they pointed the paper elements with their index finger. The moderator acted as an “incredibly intelligent computer” [6], manipulating the printed elements in accordance with the rules, interaction models and navigation flow established in the project, i.e., responding to the user’s commands and simulating screen transitions, dialogues, spoken words, sound elements and animation.

2 Methods

We used the User Centered Design (UCD) approach to design and prototype the application. The prototype will be tested with a sample of children with socioeconomic and educational levels similar to the target group. The prototype was designed in four steps: (i) identification of needs and requirements of the system; (ii) definition of characters and narrative; (iii) fluxogram and wireframes; (iv) prototyping. This workflow helped everyone in the creation team to better understand the system’s goal, user specificities and even the difficulties encountered during implementation of the prototype.

3 Results and Discussion

3.1 Definition of the System’s Requisites

First, children were observed while performing the original paper version of the test [2]. This was important to identify the main difficulties children faced during the test and try to present solutions to them in the interactive application. Sessions were video-recorded and the material was used in discussions with the team members (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.

Observation of a student performing a Scliar-Cabral test

In particular, the following steps during the application of the physical version of the test to the children were considered troublesome: (i) the examiner could be overwhelmed and confused while trying to manipulate test objects and simultaneously give instructions to the child; (ii) difficulty to maintain the engagement of the respondent during the time necessary to manipulate and arrange the test objects; (iii) difficulties associated with the filling of the forms with the test results; (iv) problems due to possible human error during all the above steps.

Based on these observations, the team established a strategy of putting the user (student) at the center of the design process. The first step was to guarantee the user’s engagement by using the following approaches: (1) use of gamification strategies to create an engaging plot and characters in order to draw the children’s attention; (2) make heavy use of multimedia resources to bring the characters to life. This second approach aimed at optimizing the system’s dynamics, including the presentation of each test and data management, in order to avoid human error. The proposed solution was to develop the application in two layers: the first one would play out in the user’s tablet, and the other in the examiner’s, which in turn would be able to control and send instructions to the children’s device. After definition of this basic architecture, we proceeded to create the game’s plotline and develop the characters responsible for presenting the narrative to the children (item 3.2); establish the navigation Fluxogram and wireframes (item 3.3) and Prototyping (item 3.4).

3.2 Plotline and Characters

We created 9 short stories to accompany each test. The development of characters was based on a psycholinguistics approach [1, 2], with elements and strategies usually employed in videogames (gamification). The characters will interact with the children and follow them through the completion of the test. Besides the obvious purpose of engaging the children to perform the tests, gamification also helped with the delivery of clear instructions to the children.

The characters were based on animals found in the Brazilian fauna and with anthropomorphic characteristics. The goal was to make the characters come to life with characteristics which are harmonic with the goals of each test. The scripts were created to convey the feeling of an interactive challenging adventure. Below, we present the plots and characters used in the test battery.

1 – Bat photographer 1

Summary: at the beginning of the test, the children is presented to a child bat: Morce Guinho. He is a photographer, but his eyesight is not so good and he ends up mixing the photographs he just made after having a fruit for lunch. Guinho then asks the child for help, saying that he will say which object is in each picture and the child indicates which one it corresponds. After the task is done, Guinho thanks the child and go on to take other pictures.

Morce Guinho: “Hi! How are you? This is a big forest, isn’t it? I almost got lost taking my pictures after lunch and… I can’t believe! I was so absorbed taking pictures that I ended up mixing them!… Listen, would you help me find and organize them? I don’t see well and would be happy if you could help me.”

*The pictures show up on the screen*

Morce Guinho: “It is very simple, I tell you what the picture is about and you point to the correct one. Then, I take it and put it in my backpack… Isn’t it easy?… Shall we begin?”

*After the test*

Morce Guinho: “Gee, thanks! You helped a lot. I appreciated it. Now, I’ll go back to taking my pictures. See you!”

2 – Bat photographer 2

Summary: When he is leaving, the bat stumbles and fall to the ground (He is afraid of heights and avoids flying), spreading again the pictures that fall off from his backpack. Thus, the child will help the bat to reorganize his pictures, again. This time, however, he points to the picture and asks the child what is depicted on it. Then, he puts it back in his backpack. After it is finished, he thanks the child, again, and apologizes before returning to take pictures.

Morce Guinho: “Look, a cardinal! It’s being so long since… Ouch!”

*The batch stumbles and falls to the ground. The pictures are shown flying around *

Morce Guinho: “I can’t believe it! Again?! Oh, no! Now, I’ll have to organize everything, again. At least you helped me before and I won’t have trouble finding them… My glasses… I broke them! What’s happening, today?! It’s definitely not my lucky day. Look, since I can’t see without my glasses, if I point to the pictures, would you tell me what they show?”

*the test begins and ends*

3 – Tamarin friends

Summary: While he is distracted taking pictures, the bat leaves its backpack open and a folder falls off spilling some photographs on the floor. Two tamarin monkeys, Dodô and Marrom, are observing the scene and ask the child to organize them back in the folder. After, the bat asks them to deliver the photos to one of his friends, a sea turtle.

4 – Parrot family – Papai Gaio and the little Aya

Summary: the father is teaching his daughter about phonemes, the units of sound that differentiate words. He then asks the child to help them by pronouncing words after removing their first phoneme. At the end, the father thanks the child for helping teaching his daughter.

3.3 Fluxograms and Wireframes

In this part, we defined the models of interaction of the application considering the two target layers of the system: child’s and examiner’s. Figure 2 shows an example of a wireframe - the schematic and visual representation of a screen, with its respective elements of interaction and information. In Fig. 3 we show an example of a wireframe of a screen from the examiner’s layer, which contains the results and information regarding the performance of the child on Test 2 “oral production”. This screen allows the recording and playback of the children’s speech for offline analysis– a resource that was not available in the print version of the test. It should be emphasized that the interface allows the examiner to input his/her considerations about the child’s performance and observations about eventual interferences during the test.

Fig. 2.

Wireframe with Guinho character

Fig. 3.

Wireframe interface of the assistant’s system.

3.4 Prototying

Initially, we developed a general wireframe of the examiner’s layer – with schematics of the interface and its elements of interaction and information. After definition of this wireframe, based on the observations of the sessions with the children, analysis of the print version of the instrument (Paper Prototying), we established the goals, restrictions and characteristics necessary to implement the application.

The paper prototyping allowed the team to establish the objectives and evaluate constraints and needs without having to devote many hours working with coding in a specific computer language.

From the prototyping sessions it was possible: (a) to redefine the position and size of certain elements on the screen; (b) to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using specific interfaces elements; (c) to identify gaps in the consistency of the navigation and the microinteractions adopted by the interaction model.

4 Final Comments

Even though the print version of the Scliar-Cabral battery has been tested successfully before in several schools, we believe our system has the potential to bring considerable improvement to the test battery and help it being more effective. One crucial improvement is related to the engagement and motivation of the users with the help of gamification. Since videogames are very pervasive in the demography targeted by the system, the use of elements associated with game playing, such as interactivity with characters following a fictional narrative, has the potential to motivate the users and increase the odds of them successfully completing the test battery. This helps to improve both the sensitivity and specificity of the test. Besides, our system helps diminish the possibility of inadvertent errors by the examiner.

One important early decision in our efforts was to use a participatory design approach, seeking to include a crucial stakeholder, the child, in the design process. The reliance on high definition prototyping was time consuming, but gave the creative team a better comprehension of the desirable characteristics of the system. The next steps will include testing the paper prototype with schoolchildren of variable degrees of literacy, development of a high definition prototype with the full version of the system, including both the user’s and examiner’s systems, development of an artificial intelligence system to recognize and analyze oral production, and definition of distribution strategies.