In order to perform activities autonomously, people with autism need a clear and stable visual structure that guides them every step of the way, providing answers to following basic questions:
- What work do I have to do?
- How much do I have to do?
- How do I know I am making progress, how do I know when I have finished, and where do I put the work when I have finished it?
- What do I do next?
To support these needs, the field of educational intervention in autism uses what is known as an "individualized system of work". This is one of the basic strategies of the TEACCH Program (Mesibov and Howley, 2010) and it has been used in numerous countries for several decades. Inspired by this program, SAVIA creates a small virtual space geared toward individual work, with or without assistance.
The objective is for children with ASD to become familiar with the elements of the individualized system of work, guided by a tasks panel, an inbox, a work space, a sequence of steps to follow, and an outbox. These milestones correspond to the needs expressed in the aforementioned visual structure, adapted in this case for the Learn How to Learn game.
In learning the dynamics of this system and autonomously performing a group of basic elementary tasks (pairing, cause-effect and other basic activities), we can assert that, to a certain extent, users will have "learned how to learn": hence the name chosen for this game.