AdaPEtive
Tabletop games for visually impaired students
AdaPEtive is a tabletop game designed for the students at Western Pennsylvania School for the Blind who suffer from various visual and motor impairments. By working with the PE program at WPSBC, our project group identified gaps in the curriculum and designed a game to work on underdeveloped skills.
The Project
WPSBC students have the same PE equipment from K through 12. The PE director worked with our project group through the Art of Making class at Pitt (ENGR 0716) to work on a new edition to their equipment: a tabletop game that exercises timing skills while remaining engaging, interactive, and multiplayer. The game has LEDs and buzzers, keeping the game stimulating for those with various levels of visual impairments. The project lasted for multiple weeks, from ideation through design and prototyping to manufacturing, assembly, and implementation. We conducted user testing with students at WPSBC to understand how best to meet their needs, and iterated on our design choices based on our findings. As someone who enjoys working with kids, I found this project incredibly meaningful, and I enjoyed serving the Pitt community while learning valuable project management skills.
By creating an adaptive game, we created single-player or multiplayer options, focusing on different skills. Through our research, we found that timing skills were underdeveloped in the existing curriculum, so we wanted to integrate those skills into our game. The LEDs and buzzer ball created visual and physical feedback that helped keep the game engaging for students with all levels of impairments.
Watch the project video above for an overview of the design process.
My project team consisted of myself (Hannah Levine), Ben Carnovale, Nate Ginck, Moriah Eley, Kasey Forsythe, and Rebecca Miller, with support from the Art of Making class, Dr Samosky, and the Western Pennsylvania School for the Blind.