[2017] MInf student, Orisa Ngampakdeepanich has been awarded 2nd place in the Young Software Engineer of the Year 2017 awards for her project entitled "Peter’s Adventures: A tablet app to elicit pretend play with children with ACS”. Image Orisa's app Orisa set out to create an effective educational tool using augmented reality to help children with autism spectrum condition (ASC), to counteract some of the developmental challenges they face. The project was part of her MInf degree in Informatics and was supervised by Prof Helen Pain. Due to an inability to engage in ‘pretend play’, children with ASC suffer from developmental delays in symbolic and divergent thinking, impacting their cognitive, language and social development. As augmented reality (AR) systems are able to visually conceptualise elements this can help enhance the initial steps a child with ASC takes into ‘pretend play’, a key element of child development, by designing a story-based AR tablet game. The award Orisa received a cheque for £2000 from sponsor BCS, and a trophy from ScotlandIS. The Young Software Engineer of the Year (YSE) awards are given to the best undergraduate software projects, drawn from across all students studying computer science and software engineering in Scotland. Each university nominates the best final year undergraduate software engineering project to be submitted for the Awards. Related links Scotland IS This article was published on 2024-03-18
