Kid in Story: Finally, a GREAT Social Story App!

Why do you want the marvelous, wonderful social story making iPad app Kid in Story? Why am I practically hopping up and down with excitement? Well...

Almost exactly one year ago, in a fit of characteristic irritation, I wrote a post on Developing Smart, Simple Social Stories Apps for Kids With Autism. About how expensive and clunky and complicated the existing apps were. About how difficult it is to find a decent app for creating the custom photo, text, and voiceover-enabled social stories my son Leo loves so much, the stories he uses to help prepare himself for transitions or trips, or to relive favorite memories.

Turns out, the development team at Locomotive Labs (formerly of Project Injini) were listening. And they didn't just make Kid in Story a great, easy-to-use social story creation app, but they went above and beyond -- including a proprietary image detection feature that "green screens" and drops your child right into their stories, either by taking an iPad photo right then and there, or by using a picture from your  photo library. Here is Locomotive Labs' own Kid in Story app demo:

Kid in Story also features several story Templates that you can drop your kids into right away, from whimsical (Are Monsters Hiding in My Room? and Faces I Make) to practical (When Is It Time to Wash My Hands?) to adventurous (What Will I See in San Francisco and At the Playground)*. And new story templates like Let's Get a Haircut! are included in app updates. Plus you can share your stories easily from inside the app, using email or the free file sharing service DropBox. And best of all, you will be able to share the stories you create with whomever you like -- grandparents, friends, therapists, teachers -- with the free Kid in Story Reader app.

Kid in Story Templates

But don't just take my word for it. Tina Cobbs, a parent and educator, let me know that:

"This app is AMAZING! I am able to use it with my son who is on the autism spectrum as well as my kindergarten class. It is easy to use and you can create books within minutes. I brought this app to the attention of our school consultant and our district purchased it as well. I have used it as social stories and/or motivation to read."

What do Leo and my own kids think? THEY LOVE IT. So, so, so much. It is so easy to use! Witness:

 

From within the Kid in Story app, I used the iPad camera to take a (cute) picture of Leo.

The Kid in Story Image Detection feature automatically figured out which parts of the picture were Leo and which weren't.

I dropped Leo right into the middle of San Francisco's Alamo Square! (From the "What Will I See in San Francisco?" template.)

Kid in Story also lets you create your own custom stories from scratch. I took Leo and his sisters to Disneyland last week, and wanted to help Leo get ready to revisit his happy place. So I made a new Kid in Story social story using pictures from our last trip:

I opened a blank Kid in Story template, imported this photo of Leo at Disneyland in 2011, went into the Kid in Story "History" and retrieved that cute photo of Leo above...

...and used it to make the cover of Leo's brand-new Disneyland social story. He loved it! Familiar, yet new. So comforting.

Leo's sister Mali has been enjoying using Kid in Story to insert herself into favorite worlds such as Middle Earth, using  the power of Google Images to find and import backgrounds:

Here she is in the Mines of Moria with her boyfriend Legolas the Elf.

And here she is yelling at the Balrog from Lord of the Rings, which she has longed to do since she was five years old.

It is a delight to see smart, talented developers use their powers to make the kind of apps our kids can use easily, which make them cackle with delight (India is so proud of getting to face off with that Balrog), and which are easy to share with the people in your life -- so that your child can have their social story available in all their iPad-enabled environments.

Now, let's see what we can do about getting a really helpful, easy-to-use Visual Schedule app going. I have ideas about that, too...

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*Disclosure: I was invited to write four of the story templates. Erm. I hope you like them.

Autism Apps: Comic Strip - CS

And so sometimes your son's home program supervisor says, "but isn't there an even simpler app for  making social stories and scripts, you know, like a comic strip?"

A ten-second iTunes search and voila: Comic Strip - CS! For only 99 cents, even!

The ice cream story above took less than five minutes to make on the iPad once we'd taken the pictures, as the interface is extremely simple and straightforward. The options aren't extensive, and I wish some of them were more flexible (scaling thought bubble and font size, flipping speech balloons), but hey -- the app cost 99 cents.

Mali was impressed as well. Here's her first effort:

Recommended, as long as your expectations are realistic, and especially if you have kids who can create and who might enjoy creating their own one-page comic strips.

Developing Smart, Simple Social Stories Apps for Kids With Autism

Note: This post has been updated.

All I want for Leo and his also-autistic friends is a simple, smart, well-designed social stories app for around $3.99. But as of now, it doesn't exist. I don't understand why it doesn't exist.

Social stories are incredibly useful tools for folks like Leo: they use clear, focused language and pictures to help an autistic person better understand potentially stressful scenarios, and provide realistic expectations and options. They can be especially helpful for travel, holidays, establishing routines, transitions, or visits to new and unfamiliar places.

We used to make custom social story books for Leo, sometimes through iPhoto or Shutterfly, sometimes just a bunch of printed pages stapled together. But with iDevices and tablets, we now have social stories apps -- which take the social story concept one step farther, with voiceover. On his iPad, my pre-reader Leo can "read" his social stories independently. It's really damn cool, not to mention empowering.

Here's a iPad story we made for Leo two summers ago, detailing one of our family's weekly routines:

Great, right? Absolutely. But you know what is not great and has long made me grumble? The featured app, Stories2Learn, costs $13.99. Its competitor, Pictello, costs $18.99. [updated to add: Pictello features text-to-speech, which is very different than simple voiceover recording, and affects the price point considerably. For more info, see comments.] Similar apps -- like the special education-oriented, custom-content and voiceover-enabled Word SLaPps and Injini's Write My Name -- are $4.99 and $1.99* respectively. Why the price differences? Some of the higher-priced apps are more complicated than the lower-priced apps, but not all. What explanation, then, other than that ever-lingering special needs penalty cost?

With the front-runner social story apps offering more features than many users require, and costing more than many users are used to paying, there's an opportunity for someone else to capture a large, under-served, enthusiastic, loyal, and value-conscious audience. So, what should a potential social stories app developer keep in mind?

To work for Leo and his friends, here are the only functions a social stories app needs:

1. Create/edit story button on home page
2. Upload photos
3. Enter custom text
4. Record voiceover
5. Page through stories by swiping and/or tapping a button/arrow
6. Save stories as graphic icons with text titles, in list or folder format, and place them on the home page.
7. (Optional) Share/upload stories, e.g., to use at school and at home

The interface needs to be smart and simple, in terms of available choices and steps. Any features more elaborate than the list above could be superfluous and confusing -- I just want to make the stories, and Leo just wants to read them. Though a discreet info button for parents/educators/caregivers/authors also wouldn't hurt, in terms of advising about language to use -- short, action-oriented phrases, if-then statements, avoiding pronouns, etc.

Potential developers should look at the striking UIs and graphics of (again) Injini, a company that is in my opinion the industry standard-bearer for simple, elegant, engaging, thoughtful, useful, special needs-friendly kids' app design. Honestly, I'd love to see what Injini could do with a social stories app -- especially as there's no reason the app would need to be limited to the special needs market. Developers could make an app called "My Stories About Me" or some such, and parallel-market it to families of toddlers and preschoolers as a way to connect with family and friend by making stories together or for each other, which would have the extra benefit/hook of reinforcing those reading skills.

I know that folks like Russ Ewell and Pamela Sloan-Bradbury are looking into developing social stories apps. They both participated in  October's Hacking Autism event, where we all observed not one but two groups focusing on social stories -- so I suspect Pamela and Russ are already on the right track, and I have faith they'll do the right thing. I just want them to do it faster!

I want a well-designed, affordable social stories app for Leo, and I want it now. I hope someone will step up.

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And speaking of social stories apps ... you know what I never want to see again? I never want to see a developer make a choice that completely disregards their users' needs. I'm looking at you, Stories2Learn. Your software upgrade obliterated all of Leo's beloved social stories without warning, stories we'd spent months creating, stories that he returned to for comfort and reassurance and nostalgia on a near-daily basis.

I can recreate those stories somewhat, but as Leo has remarkable visual recall and super-precise hearing, he can tell that the new stories are not the same -- especially as some of the original stories' voiceovers were recorded by non-local visiting friends and relatives so Leo wouldn't miss them so much once they went home.

It's been a few months since the stories disappeared, and I am no less furious than I was upon first discovering they were gone -- especially since Leo is still plaintively paging through the Photos folder where the original social stories apps photos are kept, hoping they'll somehow magically reassemble into the stories he'll never be able to experience again, and misses so much.

I understand that it is not always possible to keep all original features and content when developers upgrade apps -- I'm a former software producer, so I've been in that position myself. But then I didn't make software specifically for kids like Leo, who have so few tools for creating routine and predictability; I didn't wrench away some of those kids' best tools for making sense of this utterly confusing and overwhelming world. Leo and his social stories-loving peers aren't interested in or in some cases aren't able to conceptualize the explanations why their social stories disappeared, they just know that their stories are gone, and they're devastated.

It was a bad choice to let the Stories2Learn upgrade delete existing social stories. A bad decision not just for financial reasons -- customers may have a hard time trusting you again -- but for compassionate ones. I am extremely disappointed.

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*Please note that app prices change all the time. These prices are accurate as of today.

Summer Launch

We're doing it. We're taking Leo on his grandparents' boat -- the boat they built with a designated berth for each grandchild (though at the time there were just four grandsprogs as opposed to the current sextet) -- and on which he has been on exactly one time, for a quick Lake Washington/Lake Union jaunt. We're prepping him with yet another social story:

His grandparents are being amazing, they are open to Leo staying on the boat for as many nights as he wants to - or no nights at all. Or taking one of the little boats and going ashore for a break. Or going ashore and taking a taxi straight home, if he starts melting. Ideally, though, our weekend will culminate with the extended Rosenberg family gawking at Fourth of July Fireworks from the middle of Lake Union. We are front-loaded with our iPad and tons of new videos and apps and music. We are poised for success.

(Plus his grandparents also do an expert job of stocking their wet bar.)

Hopefully we can celebrate afterwards with our own [Leelo's] on a Boat video. Will keep you updated.

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In other matters:

I have a post up on BlogHer today, about Leo's extended but successful journey to toileting independence. We now live in a pullup-free household! So proud of our boy.

We are having phenomenal success at The Thinking Person's Guide to Autism. We are drowning in riches. We are achieving our goals, in terms of the spectrum (*rimshot*) of topics we'll be covering, showcasing perspectives from parents and professionals and educators and autistics/people with autism, throwing out strong statements about science and pseudoscience, and being a genuinely useful resource. We have extremely talented professionals donating their services for photography and book design. The commenting has been lively as well. We are so grateful to everyone who is helping TPGA kick ass!

(If you want to be one of the writers who helps TPGA kick ass, we've extended the deadline for submissions for the book to July 16, as we've been truly deluged with excellent writing. But we'll continue publishing essays online if that timeframe is too tight but you still want to participate.)

Other than that, our summer is the usual joyous swirl. Leo is in summer school for his last session at Loma Marina before transferring to Autism Wunderskool in the fall. He also came to one of our local concerts in the park for first time ever, and not only tolerated it but enjoyed it, I think. He was there for three hours and never complained. (Mali certainly didn't complain -- the band played doo-wop and funk, including her very favorite: Earth Wind & Fire! She even corrected me on their playlist -- I thought they were playing Boogie Wonderland but she said, rightly, that it was Let's Groove.)

Iz went to Green Day camp last week, and totally kicked butt with her singing and learning to play the drums (she and her friend Merlin didn't really consider Green Day's lack of keyboards when they signed up). They had a concert on the last day, and played four songs. I was impressed by how unfazed Iz and Merlin were by occasional bonks and how seamlessly they picked back up and corrected themselves without freaking, until Merlin's mom Ep pointed out that our kids have been taking piano from a Ukrainian for several years now, during which time their instructor has bullet-proofed their performance attitudes. Which also explains a lot about Iz's confidence and recovery skills when she played Mary in the Secret Garden (she said she blew it a couple of times, but no one in the audience could tell, including me).

Mali went to local rec center "let's do crafts and run around at the park!" camp with her friend Lucy,  which she considered every bit as worthy as Iz's band camp. Lucy came home with us several times by my request, which is just part of enjoying having the house where friends and family feel comfortable coming over spontaneously, playing, swimming, and just hanging out. Which reminds me, locals: Are you going to the BlogHer10 pre-conference meetup on July 24? I'm going. Hope to see you there.

Also starting to get excited about BlogHer10 itself. About moderating the Autism Panel with luminaries Pamela Merritt, who is SharkFu of Angry Black Bitch, Jean Winegardner of Stimeyland, and Sharon DaVanport of the Autism Women's Network. About seeing so many amazing people. About going to get me some damn Ghanaian food. And about having a book reading with Jen Myers & Jen Silverman for My Baby Rides the Short Bus on Saturday, August 7, at 7 PM at Bluestockings bookstore on the Lower East Side of Manhattan (please come!).

So, a mellow summer. Yeah! How is your summer shaping up?