In spring 2008, the industrial and interaction design office Myra Industrial Design, Stockholm, and the world leader in eye tracking and eye control solutions Tobii Technology, Stockholm, received the Swedish Grand Award of Design 2008 from the Association of Swedish Engineering Industries in association with the Swedish Industrial Design Foundation and the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design. 

Myra and Tobii Technology were recognized for a series of eye-controlled communication devices. 

Myra Industrial Design and Tobii Technology chose to use the prize money to finance a user study performed by the Design Research Lab at Umeå Institute of Design. This user study was a pre-study for a possible project geared at designing an everyday communication tool for children with special needs. 

This report (in English) describes the process and result of the user study Communication requirements for children with special needs carried out by Catharina Henje and Linda Bogren at the Design Research Lab at Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå University in the spring 2009. The user study was partly conducted in cooperation with José Ledon and Rouien Zarin, master’s students at the Interaction Design program at Umeå Institute of Design. 

At that time, Tobii didn't make an eye-controlled computer system.  They only produced systems for gaze analysis.  In other words their systems only 'read' eye movement, e.g. for market research, psychological testing, etc - they didn't have a system that you could use to control the computer.

Mick phoned Henrik Eskilsson of Tobii to arrange for a demonstration of the system to see if it had any potential as an eye control device.  A demonstration at Bunnyfoot was arranged and Mick admits to being amazed by the potential of the system. In his view, the most exciting feature was the system's potential to accommodate significant head movement – something that could open the way for many more people to use eye control systems.

It could be said that the “MyTobii” was conceived on Thursday 11th September 2003 when Tobii sent a programmer, Kirk Ewing, to spend time with Mick in order to design the interface software that would turn the Tobii from a system that just interpreted eye movement to a device that provided gaze control.  The desktop eye control Tobii, the “MyTobii D10”, was developed and, later, the “MyTobii P10”, an all-in-one tablet was produced and sold all over the world.

So far, Mick has resisted the temptation to join any specific eye-control company and enjoys being in a position to collaborate with them all.  He believes very strongly that, at this moment in time, with eye-control being such a new and rapidly developing field, it is vitally important for people to have an independent specialist to turn to for unbiased information and advice.

When creating our symbol-based communication software Tobii Sono Lexis, our ambition was to design a product that allows these individuals to develop communication intuitively, with as little customization as possible for the caregivers. Early in the process Tobii engaged a research team at one of the universities in Freiburg, Germany.

To create a solution that meets the toughest of demands – generating grammatically correct sentences from symbols – the Sono Lexis development team used the complex grammar of the German language as a base. The idea was that if the software could cope with German grammar and produce functional, grammatically correct sentences from symbols, it would be relatively easy to do the same in a simpler language.

Second-language learning as strategy

Researchers in Freiburg made use of continuous user evaluations, Tobii’s leading technical expertise and a brand new approach to AAC research. Dr. Gregor Renner, Professor for Special Education and Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC), explains  this approach:

“A common strategy is to focus on the statistics of frequently used words and phrases in the spoken language. In our opinion this strategy has some major disadvantages, since it highlights words like ‘in’ and ‘and’, etc., that don’t say much. For AAC it is necessary to focus on the communicative value of words. Since there is very little research in this we used foreign language teaching, a research field that deals with the question frequently, as a base for vocabulary selection and structuring.”

User involvement in developing symbol-based communication

The research resulted in Sono Lexis; communication software for users who can use or can learn to use symbols and icons to build sentences of two or more words. The development process was accompanied by continuous user evaluations. Users, parents and teachers were involved in testing and giving feedback, guaranteeing that what has been developed actually meets the needs of the future users of the vocabulary.

According to Dr. Renner the most important characteristics that, in combination, are unique to Sono Lexis are:

• It gives quick access to important words that are on all pages in the same location.
• It provides a structured word navigation by word classes on all pages in the same location
• It offers improved visual feedback for icons available on a page.
• It supports grammar functions and even some grammar prediction for users who are not yet able to use these functions independently.

Tobii Sono Scribe is a text-based augmentative communication and computer access program catering to the unique needs, interests and communication styles of literate AAC users.

The functionality of Tobii Sono Scribe is based on input and feedback from AAC users, research in the fields of both Augmentative and Alternative Communication and English as a Second Language (ESL), and on more than 40 years of combined clinical research and experience. 

The following findings contributed toward the development of Tobii Sono Scribe.

Finding 1: Reading and writing is the preferred method of communication

Studies show that people who are literate prefer to use reading and writing to communicate once speech fails. Specifically, literate AAC communicators prefer typing. 

Finding 2: Word prediction reduces motor exertion

Typing is a very flexible but slow process. Although it doesn’t speed up typing word prediction does reduce the motor demands of AAC and is therefore a valuable tool in cases where motor limitations are significant.

Finding 3: People want to customize their systems

Communicators rely heavily on phrases to communicate. Sono Scribe contains over 700 of the most commonly used phrases according to research. It also predicts phrases based on frequency of use, or “smart phrasing. The solution also allows AAC users to customize their systems with favorite phrases, people’s names, and more without the assistance of others.

Finding 4: Less is more

Research shows that a relatively small number of words (between 200 and 300) make up about 80% of what we say during the course of a day. Sono Scribe contains all of these words in an easily accessible format. In fact, it contains approximately 750 of the most frequently occurring words in our language and 10,000 or more of the most frequently used words in prediction dictionaries.

Conclusion

By combining the most frequently occurring words and phrases in our language with typing, meaningful word and next word predictions and smart phrasing, Sono Scribe enables people to say what they want to say, the way they want to say it, as quickly and as effortlessly as possible despite their physical limitations.