Deysi Ortega Román
HCI Researcher & Visual Artist

My thesis explored the creation and adaptation of methods and tools to engage with low-resource communities in Peru to promote healthy nutrition among children under two years old. It describes the iterative design of context-specific design cards and presents a co-design process involving several co-design workshops with caregivers, health promoters and healthcare professionals from two Peruvian communities. Viva passed in January 2026.

Designed and evaluated an elastic multisensory surface using touch-based interactions to assist children with severe autism during music therapy. BendableSound uses the Kinect sensor and the TSPS library to detect when users’ tap or touch the fabric. To design BendableSound, I followed a user-centered design process involving interviews, observation and design sessions with caregivers. To evaluate the impact of BendableSound I compared its use against the use of traditional musical instruments during free-play involving music-based activities. We conducted a within-subjects experiment where 24 children with autism used the elastic interfaces and traditional music-based activities. Our results show children with autism were more willing to start free-play and were more time “on task” when using BendableSound against our control condition using traditional musical objects.