ELiCIT Lab Co-Authored Paper at IJLCD

The ELiCIT Lab has its first paper on investigating design patterns for touchscreen applications targeting language and communication disorders ! In a collaboration with USC’s Caruso Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery faculty member Dr. Yao Du, Monmouth University’s Special Education faculty member, Dr. Kathryn Lubniewski, certified speech language pathologist, Lori Price, ELiCIT Lab director Dr. Nikita Soni contributed to a journal paper investigating clinician’s mobile app use practices within various therapy activities, and proposed multiple interface design recommendations to help create more effective and usable mobile apps for supporting children’s speech and language development. The paper is published in the official journal of the Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders (IJLCD) and is titled, “They Can’t Believe They’re a Tiger”: Insights from pediatric speech-language pathologist mobile app users and app designers“. Here is the paper abstract:

“Background: Children with communication disorders experience difficulty in one or more areas of articulation and speech, language, fluency, voice and social communication, and they work with speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to improve their communication. With the rise of adoption and use for mobile applications among special education and healthcare service providers, SLPs also have implemented, and for some, contributed to the design of, mobile applications (apps) during clinical practice. However, how these mobile apps are designed and implemented for clinicians to facilitate their clients’ communication and learning experiences during therapy remains underinvestigated.

Aims: This qualitative research study investigated how mobile apps were designed for clinicians to target assessment and intervention goals. Additionally, it focused on how clinicians adopted these apps while integrating therapy techniques to facilitate their clients’ learning.

Methods and Procedures: Informed by the Research, Practice, and Design for iPad Apps (iRPD) framework and the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR), semi-structured interviews were conducted with 37 licensed pediatric SLPs, including 23 SLPs who have used apps and 14 SLPs who have contributed to the design of their own mobile apps. Two rounds of qualitative coding via template analysis and thematic analysis were then used to analyse client and clinician characteristics, clinical practice, therapy tools, app characteristics, influential factors and app design and use recommendations.

Outcomes and Results: Results showed SLPs utilise different genres of assistive, educational and recreational game apps to support children’s communication development when working with children who have diverse disorders.”

You can read the full paper here. Nikita helped with analysis and reporting of the finding that included interface design features for children’s speech language pathology mobile applications such as content, visual design and customization features. Our team also has a new book chapter on the related topic, stay tuned for more updates on this project!