A Guideline for Designing Mobile Applications for Children with Autism within Religious Boundaries

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder is a condition related to brain development that impacts how a person perceives and socialises with others, causing problems in social interaction and communication. The disorder also includes limited and repetitive patterns of behavior. Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) develop at a different rate and don’t necessarily develop skills in the same order as typically developing children. Nowadays, children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are having difficulties in gaining religious skills. This is due to the lack of schools that provide special religious education for disabled children. Many technologies have been developed to help children with autism for education. Mobile applications have extensively been used to enhance their daily learning. Researchers are extremely trailing their applications but not many applications are able to meet the requirements and needs of children with autism, especially in the religious context. The lack of religious mobile application guidelines is crucial as a reference for researchers. This paper aims to propose a guideline to design a mobile application for children with autism in religious context. A systematic review of previous literature on mobile application guidelines for autism and religious mobile application guidelines was conducted. This study resulted in two key findings: (1) elements of multimedia consist of text, images and sounds (2) features of application consist of interface, navigation, customisation and interaction. The proposed guidelines are potentially to be used by researchers who are interested in designing religious mobile applications for children with autism.