CRII: HCC: RUI: Collaborative Customized Daily Activity Prompting for People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

People with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) want to be independent even though they have challenges with memory, planning, and organization. Caregivers play an essential role by helping individuals with daily activities. They often tailor their support to fit each person’s unique needs. Even with recent advancements, there is a lack of accessible technologies for people with diverse cognitive abilities. Most caregivers cannot change their support to meet the constantly evolving needs of individuals with IDD. This project supports the goal of people with IDD living independently by developing a technology that supports people based on their abilities and needs. The project will create an online workbook for caregivers and individuals with IDD to practice strategies for adapting support during daily activities. Researchers will also share this project's findings at national and international academic conferences. Outcomes from this project could improve the independence and well-being of people with different types of cognitive abilities and their caregivers. Additionally, insights gained from this project can provide more opportunities for higher education and employment for people with varying cognitive abilities. The main goal of this project is to create new techniques to collaboratively customize prompts to support people with IDD in their daily activities. First, researchers will use contextual inquiry to identify gaps for prompt customization in existing applications. Then, researchers will conduct participatory design sessions to explore features necessary for creating prompts that cater to various abilities and needs. Researchers will then create a design framework that outlines dimensions for collaboratively customizing prompts in daily activities. Using this framework, researchers will develop a system that facilitates collaboration among caregivers and people with IDD to customize daily activity prompts based on individual needs. This system will also use generative artificial intelligence to provide prompt suggestions and ease the creation of new prompts. Researchers will evaluate this system through user studies involving people with IDD and their caregivers. These studies will assess the effectiveness of the system and its ability to generate new prompt examples. This project lays the groundwork for collaborative assistive technologies that help people with varying cognitive abilities. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.