When words are limited, behavior becomes the voice of nonverbal children, offering important insights. From identifying triggers to sharing data with professionals, tracking helps caregivers understand emotional needs.

Knowing the needs of someone who is nonverbal can be complicated, but speech isn't just words; it's behavior. Every action, mood swing, and routine is a form of communication. It is normal to feel unsure where to start—tracking removes that uncertainty. You can uncover patterns and find ways to provide support to your child.

Why Behavior Tracking Is Essential

A behavior tracker is more than a logbook; it's a tool for understanding. For those who are nonverbal, have autism, or both, behaviors are the primary way they express feelings like frustration, happiness, anxiety, or discomfort. Consistently tracking this information helps you:

Identify Triggers: Notice a pattern of meltdowns after a specific activity. Tracking helps connect the dots.
Understand Communication Attempts: See if a specific behavior is expressed to indicate hunger or express excitement.
Share Clear Data with Professionals: Provide therapists, doctors, and teachers with concrete data instead of just memories. This makes appointments more productive.
Measure Progress: See how new strategies or routines are impacting behavior. Are these strategies working? The data will tell you.

How to Track Behavior in Easy Speech AAC

You don't need expensive software. A good behavior tracker should be simple, consistent, and integrated into your daily life. Easy Speech AAC was designed with this in mind, offering built-in tools for caregivers and users.

1. The Mood Tracker & Analytics

Start by logging daily moods. With a single tap, you or the user can record happy, calm, anxious, tired, angry, or sad. Over time, the app's Mood Analytics chart reveals patterns so you can see the frequency over time.

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 complete, it's logged with a timestamp. This helps you see which activities were completed and when, providing insight into their accomplishments.

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." These notes are important for recalling details.

Combine Mood, Routines, and Notes into a Full Behavior Tracker

By combining these features, this platform creates a comprehensive behavior tracker. You can log a mood, note the context, and see how it relates to planned activities.

Start small. Pick one thing to track, whether it's mood or notes on a specific behavior. The key is consistency. Over time, the data you collect will become one of your most valuable tools! Start using the behavior tracker in Easy Speech AAC today!

Start Tracking for Free

When I began caring for my nonverbal brother, I learned that many AAC tools overlook behavioral expression. That realization led me to build Easy Speech AAC, a tool that identifies emotional patterns, routines, and day-to-day behaviors to support communication. What started as a family need grew into an exploration of assistive technology and emotion-aware design.

Research Question

How can HCI and behavioral-tracking design support nonverbal or neurodivergent individuals in expressing emotional states through assistive technology?

Background & Motivation

Many AAC tools are expensive, complex, or lack features for daily organization and behavioral tracking. Easy Speech AAC was developed to address these gaps by providing a free platform that integrates communication, visual scheduling, mood analytics, and gamified learning.

Methodology

Designed visual-schedule and mood-tracking systems using accessible UX principles
Released iterative builds publicly for real-world use
Collected usage feedback via site interactions and social platforms
Analyzed behavior data to refine emotional pattern recognition and visual feedback features

Findings & Insights

Users engaged most with tools that simplified routines and emotion logging
Behavior trends revealed emotional cycles tied to activities (e.g., post-school fatigue)
Accessibility improved when design prioritized emotional readability, not just verbal output

Outcome & Deliverables

Released the full AAC platform publicly in 2025
Developed a free caregiver framework in How to Track Behavior in Nonverbal Children with Autism
Ongoing development includes predictive emotional insights and expanded caregiver dashboards

Impact

Used by real families, caregivers, and therapists, with consistent recurring users and feedback. Reached over 3,000 people in the AAC community through outreach, gaining recognition for empathy-driven design.

Future Direction

I plan to expand this work through Human-Centered Computing and assistive technology research, focusing on how emotional interfaces can transform communication access.