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Background Parkinson disease (PD) is a common, multifaceted neurodegenerative disorder profoundly impacting patients' autonomy and quality of life. Assessment in real-life conditions of subjective symptoms and objective metrics of mobility and nonmotor symptoms such as sleep disturbance is strongly advocated. This information would critically guide the adaptation of antiparkinsonian medications and nonpharmacological interventions. Moreover, since the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, health care practices are being reshaped toward a more home-based care. New technologies could play a pivotal role in this new approach to clinical care. Nevertheless, devices and information technology tools might be unhandy for PD patients, thus dramatically limiting their widespread employment. Objective The goals of the research were development and usability evaluation of an application, SleepFit, for ecological momentary assessment of objective and subjective clinical metrics at PD patients’ homes, and as a remote tool for researchers to monitor patients and integrate and manage data. Methods An iterative and user-centric strategy was employed for the development of SleepFit. The core structure of SleepFit consists of (1) an electronic finger-tapping test; (2) motor, sleepiness, and emotional subjective scales; and (3) a sleep diary. Applicable design, ergonomic, and navigation principles have been applied while tailoring the application to the specific patient population. Three progressively enhanced versions of the application (alpha, v1.0, v2.0) were tested by a total of 56 patients with PD who were asked to perform multiple home assessments 4 times per day for 2 weeks. Patient compliance was calculated as the proportion of completed tasks out of the total number of expected tasks. Satisfaction on the latest version (v2.0) was evaluated as potential willingness to use SleepFit again after the end of the study. Results From alpha to v1.0, SleepFit was improved in graphics, ergonomics, and navigation, with automated flows guiding the patients in performing tasks throughout the 24 hours, and real-time data collection and consultation were made possible thanks to a remote web portal. In v2.0, the kiosk-mode feature restricts the use of the tablet to the SleepFit application only, thus preventing users from accidentally exiting the application. A total of 52 (4 dropouts) patients were included in the analyses. Overall compliance (all versions) was 88.89% (5707/6420). SleepFit was progressively enhanced and compliance increased from 87.86% (2070/2356) to 89.92% (2899/3224; P=.04). Among the patients who used v2.0, 96% (25/26) declared they would use SleepFit again. Conclusions SleepFit can be considered a state-of-the-art home-based system that increases compliance in PD patients, ensures high-quality data collection, and works as a handy tool for remote monitoring and data management in clinical research. Thanks to its user-friendliness and modular structure, it could be employed in other clinical studies with minimum adaptation efforts. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02723396; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02723396

Background: HIV serodiscordant couples are at heightened risk of HIV transmission when attempting to conceive, yet reproductive goals can outweigh concerns about HIV exposure. Safer conception strategies support fertility desires while minimizing HIV transmission risk and novel mHealth tools can optimize their use. The objective of this analysis is to examine the feasibility and usability of short message service (SMS) messages and a mobile application to support safer conception for HIV serodiscordant couples. Methods: We enrolled 74 heterosexual HIV serodiscordant couples with immediate pregnancy desires into a pilot safer conception intervention study in Thika, Kenya. Prior to pregnancy, women received daily 6-item SMS surveys to capture fertility indicators (e.g., menses, basal body temperature) and sexual behavior. The intervention also provided daily oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for the HIV-negative partner and in-depth counseling to accompany publicly-provided antiretroviral therapy (ART) for the HIV-infected partner. Couples attended monthly visits until pregnancy occurred. We measured PrEP use with medication event monitoring system (MEMS) caps and ART use via quarterly viral load quantification. We imported SMS, MEMS, and viral load data into an Android tablet application designed specifically for this setting for couples to view during clinic visits and included predictions of peak fertility days using SMS data. We used descriptive statistics to summarize SMS response data and developed a Google Analytics platform to monitor tablet application usage during follow-up. We also conducted semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of 5 healthcare providers and 19 couples. Qualitative data were analyzed using a modified constant comparative approach to identify themes related to mHealth intervention feasibility and acceptability. Results: In our sample, 34 (45.9%) couples had an HIV-infected female partner. The median age of the female partner was 30 years [interquartile range (IQR), 27–35 years], education was 10 years (IQR, 8–12 years), and partnership duration was 3 years (IQR, 2–7 years). Couples were followed for a median of 218 days (IQR, 116–348 days) prior to pregnancy. Participants completed 13,181 of 16,905 (78.0%) SMS surveys surveys sent with a median of 167 completed surveys (IQR, 74–299) per participant. Most participants completed at least 75% of the total SMS messages received (N=58; 77.3%). The tablet application was opened by counselors 1,806 times during the study period (March 2016 through April 2018). In qualitative interviews, the SMS messages were reportedly easy to respond to and “part of the daily routine”. Few participants had concerns about message confidentiality. mHealth tools were also found to be acceptable for tracking fertility indicators and enhancing provider-patient communication. Conclusions: mHealth strategies are feasible to use and acceptable to support the delivery of safer conception intervention services among HIV serodiscordant couples in Kenya.

Recent studies suggest that practice with approximate and non-symbolic arithmetic problems improves the math performance of adults, school aged children, and preschoolers. However, the relative effectiveness of approximate arithmetic training compared to available educational games, and the type of math skills that approximate arithmetic targets are unknown. The present study was designed to (1) compare the effectiveness of approximate arithmetic training to two commercially available numeral and letter identification tablet applications and (2) to examine the specific type of math skills that benefit from approximate arithmetic training. Preschool children (n = 158) were pseudo-randomly assigned to one of three conditions: approximate arithmetic, letter identification, or numeral identification. All children were trained for 10 short sessions and given pre and post tests of informal and formal math, executive function, short term memory, vocabulary, alphabet knowledge, and number word knowledge. We found a significant interaction between initial math performance and training condition, such that children with low pretest math performance benefited from approximate arithmetic training, and children with high pretest math performance benefited from symbol identification training. This effect was restricted to informal, and not formal, math problems. There were also effects of gender, socio-economic status, and age on post-test informal math score after intervention. A median split on pretest math ability indicated that children in the low half of math scores in the approximate arithmetic training condition performed significantly better than children in the letter identification training condition on post-test informal math problems when controlling for pretest, age, gender, and socio-economic status. Our results support the conclusion that approximate arithmetic training may be especially effective for children with low math skills, and that approximate arithmetic training improves early informal, but not formal, math skills.

International audience; Including children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in mainstream environments creates a need for new interventions whose efficacy must be assessed in situ. This article presents a tablet-based application for activity schedules that has been designed following a participatory design approach involving mainstream teachers, special education teachers, and school aides. This application addresses two domains of activities: classroom routines and verbal communications. We assessed the efficiency of our application with two overlapping user studies in mainstream inclusion, sharing a group of children with ASD. The first experiment involved 10 children with ASD, where five children were equipped with our tabled-based application and five were not equipped. We show that (1) the use of the application is rapidly self-initiated (after 2 months for almost all the participants) and (2) the tablet-supported routines are better performed after 3 months of intervention. The second experiment involved 10 children equipped with our application; it shared the data collected for the five children with ASD and compared them with data collected for five children with intellectual disability (ID). We show that (1) children with ID are not autonomous in the use of the application at the end of the intervention, (2) both groups exhibited the same benefits on classroom routines, and (3) children with ID improve significantly less their performance on verbal communication routines. These results are discussed in relation with our design principles. Importantly, the inclusion of a group with another neurodevelopmental condition provided insights about the applicability of these principles beyond the target population of children with ASD. Additional Key Words and Phrases: Participatory design, educative inclusion in mainstream environment, idiosyncratic multimedia contents ACM Reference Format: Charles Fage, Léonard Pommereau, Charles Consel, Emilie Balland, andHéì ene Sauzéon. 2016. Tablet-based activity schedule in mainstream environment for children with autism and children with ID. Tour, 33405 TALENCE CEDEX; emails: first name.last name@inria.fr. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies show this notice on the first page or initial screen of a display along with the full citation. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, to redistribute to lists, or to use any component of this work in other works requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Permissions may be requested from Publications

ObjectiveThis study aimed to investigate the content of an English-language version of a Japanese iPad application designed to facilitate shared decision-making around goal setting in rehabilitation: Aid for Decision-making in Occupational Choice—English (ADOC-E).DesignPhase 1: Delphi methods to reach consensus with an international group of expert occupational therapists on the text and images in ADOC-E. Phase 2: Testing correct recognition (unprompted and prompted) of images in ADOC-E by health service users in inpatient rehabilitation and residential care.SettingPhase 1: International, online. Phase 2: Three healthcare services in New Zealand—(1) a residential rehabilitation service for traumatic brain injury, (2) a nursing home for frail older adults and (3) an inpatient rehabilitation ward in a public hospital.ParticipantsPhase 1: Fourteen experienced occupational therapists from New Zealand (4), Australia (4), UK (2) and USA (4). Phase 2: Twenty-four rehabilitation and residential care service users (10 men, 14 women; 20–95 years; Mini-Mental State Exam scores 13–30).ResultsFour Delphi rounds were required to reach consensus with the experienced occupational therapists on the content of ADOC-E, ending with 100 items covering daily activities that people do and social roles they participate in. Ninety-five per cent (95/100) of ADOC-E items could each be correctly identified by over 80% of service user participants with either unprompted or prompted recognition.ConclusionWhile a few of the more abstract concepts in ADOC-E (related to complex social roles) were less likely to be correctly recognised by all participants, the text and images ADOC-E were deemed to be fit for purpose overall and ready for future clinical testing.

International audience; Including children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in mainstreamed environments creates a need for new interventions whose efficacy must be assessed in situ. This paper presents a tablet-based application for activity schedules that has been designed following a participatory design approach involving mainstream teachers, special-education teachers and school aides. This applications addresses two domains of activities: classroom routines and verbal communications.We assessed the efficiency of our application with a pilot study involving 10 children with ASD in mainstream inclusion. We show that (1) the use of the application is rapidly self-initiated and that (2) the tablet-supported routines are differently executed over time according to the activity domain conditions.; Inclure les enfants avec Troubles du Spectre Autistique (TSA) dans des environnements de vie quotidienne créé un besoin pour de nouvelles interventions dont l'efficacité doit être évaluée in situ. Cet article présente une application d'aide à la conduite d'activités conçue en suivant une approche dite de “design participatif”, incluant des enseignants des classes ordinaires, des enseignants spécialisés et des auxiliaires de vie scolaire. Cette application adresse deux domaines d'activités : les routines de classe et la communication verbale.L'efficacité de cette application a été testée dans une étude pilote impliquant 10 élèves avec TSA en inclusion en classe ordinaire. Nous montrons que (1) l'utilisation de notre application est rapidement auto-initiée et (2) les activités assistées par l'application sont mieux réalisées différemment après trois mois d'intervention.

International audience; Including children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in mainstreamed environments creates a need for new interventions whose efficacy must be assessed in situ. This paper presents a tablet-based application for activ- ity schedules that has been designed following a partic- ipatory design approach involving mainstream teachers, special-education teachers and school aides. This appli- cations addresses two domains of activities: classroom routines and verbal communications. We assessed the efficiency of our application with a study involving 10 children with ASD in mainstream inclusion (5 children are equipped and 5 are not equipped). We show that (1) the use of the application is rapidly self- initiated (after two months for almost all the partici- pants) and that (2) the tablet-supported routines are differently executed over time according to the activity domain conditions. Importantly, compared to the con- trol children, the equipped children exhibited more class- room and communication routines correctly performed after three month of intervention.; Inclure des enfants avec Troubles du Spectre Autistique (TSA) dans des environnements ordinaires soulève un besoin en nouvelles interventions dont l'efficacité doit être validée in situ. Ce papier présente une application sur tablette pour le séquençage d'activité créée selon une approche de design participatif incluant les professeurs, enseignants spécialisés et auxiliaires de vie scolaire. Cette application adresse deux domaines d'activités : les routines scolaires et la communication verbale. Nous avons testé l'efficacité de notre application par une étude impliquant 10 enfants avec TSA dans des classes ordinaires (5 enfants équipés et 5 non-équipés). Nous montrons que (1) l'utilisation de l'application est rapidement initiée par l'enfant (après 2 mois pour presque tous les participants) et (2) les routines supportées par l'application sont exécutées différemment à travers le temps selon le domaine d'activités. Comparés aux enfants contrôles, les enfants équipés ont montré plus de routines de classes et verbales correctement exécutées après 3 mois d'intervention.

The subject of computer programming is highly practical and it is crucial that beginners participate in hands-on experimentation as part of the learning process. Unfortunately, many first year engineering students that are new to this discipline are often intimidated by the material and unmotivated to review or practice the concepts on their own. The purpose of this study is to measure the success of using a cooperative and competitive video game as a pedagogical tool in software engineering education. The video game that was developed for this research is called Space Race and it harnesses the power of group discussion to encourage students to share their individual understandings of basic programming concepts. This dissemination of knowledge within groups was able to teach many students new concepts that they did not understand previously.At least 67% of the students stated that the game motivates them to review course material. The game was wellreceived with at least 82% of the students that played Space Race agreeing that they would recommend that others also learn basic programming concepts with this game. Although the game does not directly teach students new concepts, it allows the instructors to identify what concepts students struggle with. Space Race encourages students to ask the instructor questions when they do not understand. In some cases, game participants outperform nonparticipants on course exams. On the final course exam, all of the statistically significant (p

The skill of cooking a meal from start to end is becoming a stressful every day activity in many homes in Denmark. Less and less parents focus on including their children in preparing dinner because they see it as a time-consuming activity that the child would rather be left out of. In this paper we examine the importance of teaching children how to cook from a young age as well as we investigate in why it can seem like such a big task for them to actually get started with cooking. The study focuses on how to develop an interactive tablet and smartphone application that provides children with an explorative platform for them to develop their cooking skills on. The detailed process of developing a simple tablet/smartphone application is explored in order to arrive at an understand of the challenges children face when cooking, how we encourage them to cook and how we facilitate them with the best possible options for this. By doing several explorative workshops and studying previous research about how children learn, understand and explore their creativity, we arrive at an understanding of the challenges, limits and benefits there would be with an application like this.

Mobile devices are becoming more common in health care and studies show that they can contribute with a lot of benefits. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate what important factors should be considered when designing an application for a tablet computer to be used at an emergency department. The project involved creating a prototype for an application that would be used as a decision support system for doctors when a stroke patient arrives to the emergency department – a case where time and accuracy are both equally important. Research was conducted by doing field studies and interviews, and the results from these helped to develop a prototype. Usability tests were conducted on the prototype and changes were made accordingly. The study showed that there are many important factors to consider; e.g. identifying the workflows, creating a non-linear system and overview support.