The topic I wish to address in my thesis is that of specific learning disabilities, and especially of the disorder of dyslexia in children.
According to the National Institutes of Health and the International Dyslexia Association (Nov. 12, 2002)
“Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition, and by poor spelling and decoding abilities.”
The choice of this topic stems mainly from my interest to investigate a social issue related to children and secondly, from having found that for this disorder there are few tools that really help to tackle the problem especially avoiding the marginalization of the child.
The goal is to understand how best to use new technologies to help the dyslexic person to find the best strategies for solving linguistic problems, but also to compensate for deficiencies related psychomotor functions.
In the role of interaction designer I identified the opportunity to develop three different solutions to the problem:
- create a device that allows to recognize dyslexia and stimulate the senses useful for learning;
- create an interactive table, useful for teaching through active, creative and effective learning, for use in school settings;
- create a software to be used for the study at home, in order to make the child more independent.