The participatory design of a sound and image enhanced daily planner for people with aphasia

Abstract

Aphasia is a cognitive disorder that impairs speech and language. From interviews with aphasic individuals, their caregivers, and speech-language pathologists, the need was identified for a daily planner that allows aphasic users to independently manage their appointments. We used a par-ticipatory design approach to develop ESI Planner (the En-hanced with Sound and Images Planner) for use on a PDA and subsequently evaluated it in a lab study. This method-ology was used in order to achieve both usable and adopt-able technology. In addition to describing our experience in designing ESI Planner, two main contributions are pro-vided: general guidelines for working with special popula-tions in the development of technology, and design guide-lines for accessible handheld technology.