Rhythm affects reading and can be used as a tool to help people with dyslexia. This is the idea behind the video game that Mikel Ostiz Blanco is developing in his doctoral thesis within the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra, the Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language (BCBL) and the University of Vic.

Mikel is currently undertaking a six-month research stay at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human Computer Interaction Institute (Pittsburgh, USA) in order to advance in the development of hisvideo game and have a version with which to do the first round of testing. This research stay was made possible thanks to grants from the Banco Sabadell Foundation and the Caja Navarra Foundation. Ostiz additionally receives funding for his PhD program from the Obra Social La Caixa foundation.

As he explains, "[Carnegie Mellon] is the perfect place to build it" since the center here is considered one of the most prestigious for engineering applied to accessibility and to people with special needs.

Mikel is working with Jeff Bigham, an expert in human-computer interaction, and Luz Rello, an expert in computer applications to help people with dyslexia. He is learning a lot about evaluating the usability of a computer tool and the analysis of human-computer interaction.

"It is a privileged environment to develop a tool like mine; the video game will reach a level that would not have been possible without this stay," he says.

Improving rhythm and visual attention

The video game, called Jellys, aims to help improve the reading ability of children with dyslexia through rhythm training and visual attention. In it, characters,a boy or a girl explorer, travel to different worlds. The characters have to find and capture jellys through rhythm and visual attention exercises.

Once he is back in Pamplona, ​​Mikel will perform initial testing of the game together with DISNAVARRA (Dyslexia Association of Navarra) to define human-machine interaction of children with and without dyslexia. The game’s effectiveness will be evaluatedat a school in Pamplona during the 2018-2019 academic year.