The Game Plan uses a Goal-Plan-Do-Check metacognitive problem solving framework to help teens and young adults with intellectual/ developmental disabilities identify and resolve barriers that get in the way of achieving their goals. The app structures the problem solving process into five steps:
1) Set a goal to increase participation and independence in education, work, or community settings,
2) Determine if one or more of 11 physical and social characteristics of the setting are barriers or supports to goal attainment,
3) Select from six possible strategies to resolve an identified barrier,
4) Generate a script that can be used to advocate for a change and address the identified barrier, and
5) Record if the goal is obtained after the barrier is addressed.
The app has both open and fixed form fields; user input is carried forward to generate the script and a final record of the problem solving process. Currently, users can save these tools as a pdf for future reference. Ultimately, the app will dynamically learn from and adapt to users with IDD. While problem solving using the app, when a user inputs a barrier, the app will use a data-driven machine learning approach (mostly by way of decision-tree algorithms) to suggest the best course of action (e.g., Step 3 strategies and Step 4 scripts) to help the user attain their goal. While the current app will not save any user input data, should future funding be secured, we would collect user input data to enable us to use semi-supervised learning to identify the parameters of the decision-trees that will customize app parameters to individual users.