Pico’s Adventure is a Kinect game for children with autistic spectrum disorder, aimed at promoting social initiation, understood as the promotion of behaviors such as approaching and looking for others, trying to start social communication and producing any verbal or gestural behavior for communicative goals.

The project was part of the European Project “M4all: motion- based adaptable playful learning experiences for children with motor and intellectual disabilities” and developed in the collaboration the Specialized Unit on Developmental Disorders of the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu.

The design of the experience was based on considering the game a a mediator of social communication.  We, therefore focused on designing game mechanics that are valuable for the children to communicate about them and that integrate therapeutic techniques used to facilitate social initiation. 

To this end we employed an inclusive design approach aimed at eliciting and combining requirements from therapist and children through Participatory Design.

As a result, we designed and developed a game where the child – either alone or in collaboration with adults and peers –  have to help a mascot, an amicable alien, to overcome different missions, each one designed to address a targeted behavior related with social initiation.

The game was evaluated with 15 boys with ASD between 4 and 5 years old. Results showed its efficacy in promoting social initiations between peers with respect to free-play activities.