iCorp program for NIGMS project: Interactive Fiction story to teach college readiness executive functioning skills to college-bound students with ASD and ADHD

Summary: Our Phase I prototype, College Readiness Stories (CRS) will be based on our innovative process that captures the knowledge and best practices from research scientists, practicing counselors, and successful adults with the disability and encodes their experience into a human-computer interaction, known as an Accessible Interactive Fiction (AIF) story. We developed this process as part of two NIDILRR SBIR projects; one that enables teens with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to build workplace readiness skills, and one that enables teens with vision impairments (VI) to build skills for the transition to independent adult living. Our Phase I project will answer two Specific Question: § To what extent do college bound students with ADHD or ASD students find an AIF story game to be a usable and engaging system to practice College Readiness executive functioning skills? § To what extent do non-experts find the Training Guide and Skill Charts useful for helping college bound students with these disabilities improve these skills? These questions will be answered through four Specific Aims (SA). In SA-1, we define the specifications for the prototype AIF story game. In SA-2, create the prototype AIF story game. In SA-3, create the Training Guide and Skill Charts. In SA-4, we assess the prototype’s usability and engagement by recruiting CBASD students and their parents to use the AIF story game and then measure the student’s rating of the story’s usability and engagement, and their parents rating of the usefulness of the Training Guide and Skill Charts. Progress: We have had numerous meetings between our development staff and the Expert team (research scientists and teachers) to identify the specific executive functioning skills that will be practiced in the AIF story, and to create the outline of the story and of each chapter in the story. We have not encountered any administrative or technical challenges yet; our primary concern is the commercial challenges that lay ahead. There are many several go-to-market alternatives; we need to determine which is the most appropriate. Team: Luke Voelk, Chief Technical Officer, is a cofounder of our company, and was entrepreneur lead in an NSF iCorp program for our other product, BuddyBooks. Luke will be the iCorp C-level Corporate Officer, as he has a strong background in customer discovery and product development. August Voelk, Product Manager, will be our Technical Lead. August has managed five AIF projects for students with disabilities, including the two mentioned above, from product definition to customer pilots. Our Industry Expert will be Mark Ventre, one of the investors in our company, and the former COO of a Special Education company that was strategically acquired. The three team members have confirmed that they are committed to the time requirements of the program.