HackABA

Inspiration

Applied behavioral analysis is a date-driven method to help kids with special needs, but currently the tools most therapists used are lagging from the modern technology: the recording is mostly paper and pencil, and the graphing often by hands. Managing data across different therapist is often a hassle as well. After the therapy session, the therapist will need to enter the data into a spreadsheets, which are themselves challenging to manage, aggregate, and analyze once the amount of data grows. We believe we can make things much easier by offering a web-based service that is free for therapist's day-to-day usage.

What it does

Conduct behavioral trials experiment with clear descriptions. Record the outcome with laptop, ipad, or mobile phones. The data can be shared with the client's parent to keep track of the client's progress. Flexible analyses of the data is made possible:

How I built it

Look for templates. Code. Find bugs. Code again.

Challenges I ran into

Plotting the data into graph for therapist and parents to evaluate children's progress with ABA therapy. Integrating front-end and back-end service within 36 hours is challenging as well. The design of data model and the user interface design drained a lot of our time.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Everything I mention in the challenge section. Since we think we overcome the difficulty one way or another, well, ok, mostly via hack, but a prototype is brought into life.

What I learned

Prioritize. Prioritize. Prioritize.

What's next for HackABA

Make it production ready and put it out for therapist to use! Start collecting data and improve the data presentation and analysis. We also want to explore the possibility of integrating motion sensor to detect the level of attention of the kids. Design real time media to hep provide stimulating reinforcement during the therapy.