Xings for Augmented Family Communication

When a child has special communication needs, his or her entire family is affected. This position paper deals with “Xings” (crossings or just xings): active and reactive multisensory media, designed to be communicative on their own terms, challenging existing everyday communication patterns and augmenting family communication. The common shortcomings of oral and written language are no longer critical when light, sound, music and graphics form the basis for communication instead. Moreover, the balance in ordinary communication is shifted by consistently developing the design to favor extra-linguistic modalities. On the whole, Xings are meant to enable family members to act together on terms other than those in everyday life.

Targeted for taking an active part in the interactions between at least two family members, the actions and reactions of the Xings must undergo evolutionary development. When a non-human actant is designed to communicate with human actants over extended periods of time, both parties need to learn. The Xings “learn” through the registration of the family’s previous activities in the media. That means that the history is always present and being utilized in the feedback of the Xings. At the same time it acts as feedforward, aiming to strengthen the anticipation among the participants.

Five families are currently participating in the project. The Xings join the families’ everyday activities in their homes for shorter or longer periods of time. The family members explore the media and thus influence the progress of the ongoing technological design. During and after the trial periods, the Xings’ built-in history database will show records from the family activity, thus informing and guiding the iterative development process of the project team.