Abstract

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Abstract

Nowadays, some developing countries are experiencing many problems regarding children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, including Indonesia. Autism Spectrum Disorder is a childhood-onset developmental disorder of the immature brain, which impairs social communication and social interactions in addition to persistent restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior or interests. Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder need special treatments, such as therapy by professional and certified therapists. However, there are limitations to the number of therapists and the therapists have difficulty using therapeutic tools that require extra preparation time, also there are only a few applications that help therapists to carry out the therapy for Autism Spectrum Disorder children, especially applications that are developed in Indonesian and have complete features. Therefore, in this study, we proposed Squizzy, which is an assistive technology application that specifically designed as educational software for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and developed in a tablet environment. During the development of Squizzy, we implemented Scrum methodology that will be explained in detail later. Based on the evaluation and discussion that conducted, Squizzy received many positive feedbacks from users, such as it helps therapists and parents to ease their therapy sessions by reducing the inconvenience of the therapeutic tool. Moreover, Squizzy successfully covered the cognitive part of children’s therapy.

۱٫ Introduction

The term autism or autistic is taken from a Greek word ”autos”, which means self. Bleuler then introduced this term to describe self-centered thinking in schizophrenia 1. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) typically denotes a childhoodonset developmental disorder of the immature brain, which impairs the social communication and social interactions in addition to persistent restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior or interests 2. Publication of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) put ASD under neurodevelopmental disorders 3. Intellectual disability in ASD is characterized by deficits in general mental abilities such as: problem solving, planning, abstract thinking, judgment, academic learning, and learning from experience. Communication disability in ASD represented by deficits in language, speech, and communication.

According to World Health Organization (WHO), one in 160 children has ASD4. Meanwhile, there is no official survey that counts the prevalence of ASD in Indonesia 5. Dr Rudy Sutadi reported that there are 2 new cases per 1000 population per year and 10 cases per 1000 population since 19976. Indonesia’s population is 237.5 million with a population growth rate of 1.14% in 20107. Therefore, the prevalence of ASD in Indonesia are 2.4 million children with the addition of 500 new cases per year.