UX for Children with Special Needs: Design, Interaction and Learning

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, the growth and expansion of information technology has further diversified the objectives of user profiles, interfaces, interaction and context of use. For example, games have been incorporated within digital technology as teaching and learning tools that create fun, interactive and motivating experiences that are able to engage children in ways beyond those of more traditional mechanisms. Children with special needs have disabilities or some kind of disorder. Researchers are studying how technology can favor to children with special needs. Taking in account that the majority of children with special needs have a low socio-economic status, designing low-cost digital technologies is necessary. It is also necessary to know and understand the child’s profile to help identify the most appropriate ways for them to interact with technology. Children with special needs face various challenges in their social, cultural and educational lives. In the educational field, teachers must use communication strategies, taking in account that a child has some form of disability and that their learning is different from a child without disability. These children have the responsibility to design technologies that can reasonably work in their real-world environments.

Nowadays, an increasing number of academic researchers have been addressing how to design these technologies and to investigate how mainstream technologies could better suit children with special needs. There are stakeholders that need to be involved in the design and adoption of these technologies by children, families and teachers. Therefore, designing interactive systems not only involves the designer or engineer, but a multidisciplinary team including teachers, children, and psychologists, among others, in order to create a great experience for children when they interact with the system.

We invite you to submit high quality papers to this Special Issue on “UX for Children with Special Needs: Design, Interaction and Learning”. The topics include, but are not limited to:

-Designing Interactive Experiences for Children

-Internet of Toys  

-Educational Technologies

-STEM Teaching and Learning

-Educational Robotic for Children

-Emotions and Children

-Serious Games

Prof. César A. Collazos
Prof. Juan Manuel González
Dr. Sandra Cano
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Information is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• child–computer interaction
• children with special needs
• designing for children
• user experience
• usability