Disclaimer

This article is an informational guide for using the features within Easy Speech AAC. It is not a substitute for professional medical, behavioral, or therapeutic advice.

When words are limited, behavior becomes a primary form of communication. Tracking surfaces behavioral patterns that are easy to miss in day-to-day care. From identifying triggers to sharing report data with SLPs and professionals, tracking helps caregivers understand emotional needs and provide better support.

Why Behavior Tracking Is Essential

A behavior tracker is a tool for understanding. For nonverbal individuals, behaviors are often the primary way they express feelings like frustration, happiness, or discomfort.

Identify Triggers: Patterns often emerge after repeated observation. For example, a caregiver might notice increased agitation consistently appearing 20–30 minutes after school, but only on days where a certain activity is not completed.
Understand Communication Attempts: See if a specific behavior is used to indicate specific emotions. For instance, an individual consistently presses the 'tired' icon before a meltdown, revealing the behavior is a sign of exhaustion, not defiance.
Share Clear Data with Professionals: Provide therapists and teachers with concrete data. Instead of saying 'he seemed sad last week,' you can show that sadness was logged several days in a row, all following unstructured transitions.
Measure Progress: Track whether visual schedules, sensory breaks, or routine changes reduce the frequency or intensity of specific behaviors over time, replacing guesswork with observable trends.

How to Track Behavior in Easy Speech AAC

Caregivers often track behavior using separate notebooks, spreadsheets, or third-party apps disconnected from AAC use. This separation makes it difficult to relate emotional shifts to communication context or daily routines. Easy Speech AAC was designed to support this kind of simple, integrated tracking within everyday routines.

1. The Mood Tracker & Analytics

Moods are logged by either the user or a caregiver, and the app's analytics reveal frequency patterns over time. The platform does not diagnose emotions, but instead helps caregivers distinguish isolated incidents from recurring emotional patterns linked to daily routines. For example, you might notice that ‘tired’ is logged most frequently after school.

2. The Daily Planner & Completed Tasks

Structure and routine are crucial. The planner lets you build a visual schedule for the day. When a task is marked as complete, it's logged with a timestamp, which helps you see which activities were completed and when.

3. Secure Caregiver Notes

For detailed observations, the passcode-protected Caregiver Notes section is your private journal. You can log specific events, behaviors, or anything noteworthy—for example, "Had a great therapy session today," or "Became agitated during grocery shopping."

Putting It All Together

By combining mood data, routine completion, and caregiver notes, the platform provides comprehensive context that individual logs cannot capture on their own. Caregivers can relate emotional shifts to daily structure and specific events.

Start small. Pick one thing to track, whether it's mood or notes on a specific behavior. The key is consistency. The data you collect will become one of your most valuable tools for understanding and support.

This caregiver framework directly informed the applied design research described in Designing Emotion, which documents how these features evolved through real-world use.