Projects
Education & Awareness
Tutorials & Training for school personnel, doctors, parents, and community leaders. This invovles the EYE Research Group website www.educatingyoungeyes.org (this site), a companion website for public education and activism revolving around the issues of children's vision https://www.wellchildvision.org and ongoing conferences, video development and news articles.
Software Technologies
Student's and faculty are involved in the development of software applications that can assist in vision screenings, vision therapies, and research in usability and clinical efficacy.
Community Access
Technology can assist in bringing intervention solutions for children's vision issues into the smaller communities that may not have easy access to specialists found in bigger cities.
Design, Develop, and Distribute
Do you have a vision related software idea. The EYE Research Group can assist in its design and develop a prototype. Our goal is also to assist in the distribution of such apps to communities and professionals that can give them a try in real world situations.
Prototyping & Interactive Design Process
Most of our apps and games in EYE project went through multiple design and review iterations. We aim to ensure our design of apps and games meets the needs of their users.
Mobile
We all know children like to play:-) Accordingly, we know the vision screening tools for children need to be:
- Engaging
- Free to fail
- With timely feedback
- Fit to interest curve
Alphabet Hero
Alphabet Hero: A mobile game that helps children improve their vision processing skills. This game was developed and polished based on various research on user interaction.
Alphabet Hero is a perfect example of our iterative design process. As you can see, the latest version is totally different from the prototype. During the design process, we did:
- Separate UI from gameplay systems for easy changes
- Use one-handed permanent controls to make the game easy and fun to play
- Use focused layout to make gameplay mechanism natural
- Use mature design patterns and styles to make the game look professional and consistent
Quickcheck
Easy to use and cost-effective vision screening app for in a home/school setting.
The Near Vision Toolbox
Near Vision Toolbox is a mobile app that is designed for school nurses to perform vision screening activities more accurately and efficiently, using a set of visual measurement methods and tools.
Web
We understand the importance to make screening tools easily accessible. This is why we focus heavily on making responsive user interfaces. We use a variety of methods to refine our design:
- PACT Analysis: People, Activities, Context, Technologies
- MoSCoW Analysis: Must have, Should have, Could have, Want / Wish to have
Red Flags
Red Flags is a web and mobile app that presents simple activities that children can perform to detect vision problems that cannot be caught by traditional vision screening.
CISS Survey
The web version of CISS (Convergence Insufficiency Symptom Survey) automation app went through several design iterations. The 2016 version used Bootstrap to make UI mobile responsive.
However, it was based on the basic theme without additional styling, which makes it look like a prototype website. The 2017 version improved the font size and spacing to make it display better in mobile devices.
Creating Cloud-Based Research Environment
One of the goals of the EYE Research Group aims for is to create an ecosystem to support various activities of different roles for children’s vision assessment and therapy. The following architecture shows how we combine different types of computer technologies to meet the needs of both vision care and research.
Possible roles:
- System Admin / School Admin: Manage system / school data; Approve new users
- Child / Parent: Edit personal information; Check history results
- Teacher / Volunteer: Perform vision assessments; Enter assessment results
- Doctor / Nurse: Provide detailed vision diagnostics and treatments
- Researcher: Download anonymous data for further analysis, research, and development
Some Traditional Screening Tools
Retinoscopy
A mobile app that designed for the school nurse to do the vision screening activity. Aim to replace some real tools and make the screening process more efficient and accurate.
Eye Charts/Optotypes (Snellen et al.)
Tests of Visual Acuity: Patient is asked to read symbols from chart. LEA symbols (see left picture) used with preliterate children . Results vary widely
