1Cademy - The Play•IT Project

Concept

The Play•IT Project

California State University Long Beach launched an online course, DESN 482: Research Methods for Inclusive UX Design, and it contained an assignment project named Play•IT. This project targeted designing an educational game to address the social, communication, and behavior skills needed by children with autism as they interact and play with neurological typical peers on an equal basis. The goal of this assignment project was to design educational games for both children without autism and children with autism. The games could be played alone and also involve multiple players. During the game, children could receive the opportunity to develop their cognitive and behavioral skills and it also created emotional bonds between the players. Moreover, the games were not branded as products for children with autism, instead, the creators encourage everyone to play and learn. The model supported students in identifying the social, emotional, behavioral, physical, and motivational needs of the target audience.
In the future, the format of the Play•IT project could be applied in more scenarios.