ActionTime: App to Help Develop Execution Skill

摘要

Some children require extra motivation to learn working consistently towards a goal and completing tasks in a timely manner, which is considered a very important soft skill - referred to as execution skill in this paper. Many children lacking this skill are unfortunately labelled as 'lazy', 'disobedient', or 'procrastinators'. The problem is often worse in children with attention deficiency. ActionTime is a novel application designed to help children develop execution skill through user-designed routine trainings. Here users can be parents, teachers, therapists, or the children themselves. One role is to design and give trainings and another is to take trainings. In ActionTime, the "challenges" component is used as the 'tool' for users to set goals; "completeness" and "rewards" are used as incentives to motivate children to solve those "challenges". When a challenge is solved, a goal is reached. Several competition measures have been put in place to create an environment for children to work together with their peers and friends. Because challenges themselves can be used for very specific trainings, ActionTime can also be a useful tool for building good habits.