Use Scenario: Difficult Words

The team pulled our personas together and went through a book aimed at children over the age of 8 and found words that they struggled with. They are listed below with the team's attempt at making the words easier to understand.

Candyfloss by Jacqueline Wilson
Corgi Children's. Fiction dealing with divorce, separation, family break-up. 9 - 11 year olds. ISBN: 0440866456. Publication date: 01/03/2007. 368 pages.

Chorused: kawr-rus - to sing a chorus.
Cooed: koo-d - a small sound.
Croissant: qwa-son-t - a rich buttery pastery. It was created in France.
Duvet: doo-vey - a type of blanket usually with a cover that can be removed.
Fastened: fass-end - to attach to something, to fix things together.
Koala: ko-a-la - a gray, furry animal, like a bear. It has no tail. They are found in Australia.
Motif: mo-tif - a design or shape on a T-Shirt.
Savouring: sa-vor-ing - taking a small bite of food and taking your time eating it.
Shiny: sh-i-ny - bright and glossy.
Significance: sig-nif-i-cance - important.

This has shown some issues that our device would have to handle. The word Croissant is French, and therefore should be pronounced in a French accent, these sorts of words need to have a special phonetics attribute. Words like Motif, have several meanings, in this case the group agreed that giving the most common definition will usually be sufficient (or perhaps giving more than one) and then the child can either determine the correct one or ask an adult.

Use Scenario: Word Scanner

Main Functionality:

• Scan text from any printed source ranging from books, magazines, documents and newspapers as well as handwriting and read out the word that has been scanned. It should also read a word phonetically if scanned slowly.

Use Scenarios:

• A child can use the scanner on their own to help them read words that they are having difficulties with. If they are still having difficulties in seeing how the word is made up, they could parse the word scanner over the word slowly to hear how the word is made up phonetically. All the words the child had difficulties with can be stored in the word scanning device and could be interfaced with a computer at a later stage to see what the child is struggling with.

• A child can use the scanner with a parent who has reading difficulties. In this situation if the parent was helping a child to read a text source or is reading a story to the child they can also use the word scanning device on words that they might be struggling with themselves or to see if they are in fact pronouncing a word correctly.

• An adult in teaching a child to read could also use this device as an aid. It could be utilized when trying to explain to a child that words can be split up phonetically. The device could be scanned across any given word slowly for this purpose and it would automatically split the word up and say it phonetically.

• The word scanner could also be used by a child who is having difficulties reading a particular handwriting source as the scanner should be able to use handwriting recognition when scanned across a word and read out the word in the same way as printed text.