We’re excited to announce that?Identifor, the world?s first omni-channel learning and assessment application facilitated by a human Intelligent Virtual Assistant, will be featured at the 2016 Intelligent Assistants Conference.
The Story Behind Identifor
Identifor started as a concern more than?five years ago when Cuong Do, Executive Vice President of Corporate Strategy at Samsung and the parent of an autistic child, was helping to develop Autism Speaks’ strategic plan. Research?revealed that between 500,000 and 1 million autistic teenagers will become adults in the coming decade, and?over?70%?of these future adults will face unemployment and continue to rely on parents for housing and transportation.
Cuong and his wife, Lori, then spent years’ worth of nights and weekends searching for tools and solutions to help address this upcoming tragedy. When none were found, they decided that something new had to be created. Thus, Identifor was born.
The Challenge: Identifying Unique Abilities, Skills, and Interests in Children?with Autism
Autistic children are unique, often exhibiting?towering strengths in certain?areas and significant deficiencies in others. Tragically, this often leaves their true capabilities undiscovered. Standardized measures by which schools evaluate students are?too narrow?to work for children with special needs. In addition, the time and cost associated with expert?evaluations can be?significant, and access to this level of expertise is limited.
Parents and educators need practical, easy-to-use tools to help them better?understand a child’s unique strengths and needs and develop customized?action plans that provide?greater independence and a personal path to a fulfilling future.
To meet this challenge, Identifor partnered with?True Image to create a scalable, engaging approach that uses gamification to assess and build personal profiles for each child, helping?teachers and parents customize educational programming.
Here’s a quick glimpse of what Identifor provides:
- Expert Analysis.?Created in partnership with Autism Speaks,?Identifor assembled?an international team of experts?in?multiple intelligences, executive function, and artificial intelligence, putting?the best?tools from the brightest minds into the hands of everyone with a computer or smartphone.
- Engagement through Gaming.?Unlike other systems of testing and measurement ? which can be tedious, difficult, and ineffective ? Identifor was built so students actually want to engage. It uses gaming technology with artificial intelligence, guided by conversational interaction with a human Intelligent Virtual Assistant, making it fun and easy for individuals at every level to participate. And with the Identifor website and mobile apps for iOS and Android, students can play anytime, anywhere, on any device.
- Personalized?Profiles.?As students play a carefully-designed battery of 40 free online learning games, Identifor monitors and registers key cognitive, functional, and vocational interest metrics. Using that data, Identifor?builds a?comprehensive, personalized profile that?helps parents, educators, and employers gain a better understanding of an individual?s underlying abilities, executive functioning skills, and interests.?The results are then used to create flows for avatar prompts that facilitate better understanding of the games, guide game play choices to?improve?profiles, and compare the results to other students. Each personal dashboard provides a quantitative understanding of how an individual’s abilities compare to others who use the Identifor tools.
The Ultimate Goal
Identifor is already helping over 2,000 students, parents, and educators, but there’s a lot more in the works.?The success of the website and mobile app has prompted the development of a new LifeCoach companion app?for special needs adults. This application will be available?soon?and is designed to utilize the Human Intelligent Virtual Assistant?/ AI / NLU technology to help adults maintain independence through vocational success.