Autism & Access to "Superpower"
We see technology as a tool that aids in making things effective.
However, for 15% of the world's population technology improves lives.
This is my story of generative research on 'Needs & Wants' of Autistic children —
to improve their coping strategies from uncomfortable emotions.
What I did
- Generative Research
- Participant Identification
- Contextual Interviews
- Survey Design
- Data Analysis
Deliverables
- Mind map
- Persona
- User states & contexts
Tools
- Adobe XD
- Google Forms
- Otter.ai
- Airtable
Project Type
- Individual
Duration
- Sep 2019 - Dec 2019
Impact
- A micro-level user needs to design experiences.
The Story
The penetration of technology in our daily lives tremendously helps us to do things efficiently. I felt technology could be a powerful tool to improve autistic children and their parents' lives. So, as a part of my research project, I started my exploration to discover the Needs & Wants of autistic children. With a 5 week timeline to identify, recruit, conduct, and analyze the results, I plan my reserach project to learn and identify needs of autistic children.
Research Question
- How might parents use technology with children with autism?
- What elements of technology influence autistic children to use technology?
Outcome
An artifact that provides an understanding of the users' needs: 1) ensure designers, developers and evaluators are thinking on the same page wrt users and their needs, and 2) designers and developers have a reference artifact to work against while generating and evaluating design ideas.
User States and Contexts
Research Process
Background
My lack of domain knowledge in the field of the autistic community meant I need to understand the ecosystem of an autistic individual thoroughly and quickly. So, I joined Facebook groups for autistic children actively used by parents of autistic children. This provided me a tremendous knowledge of real-life experiences with their children. Also, to gain a holistic perspective about autistic children and technological intervention. I buried deep into academic research and literature. My research unexpectedly revealed that autistic children require personalized experiences based on the severity level.
Contextual Interviews
To validate the insights from my discovery work, I conducted contextual interviews with parents and grandparents (caregivers) of autistic children (since it is not suggestive conducting interviews with special populations). A semi-structured interview method is selected since the topic is sensitive; this method leans towards a normal conversation and makes respondents comfortable in discussion-with a purpose. Also, helps to build a trust level with parents or caregivers and provide truthful answers based on their personal experiences with their children. Therefore, a semi-structured interview method is considered an appropriate method for data collection and to answer the research question.
" I started the interview with a light conversation
until parents /caregivers felt comfortable to talk about their experiences"
until parents /caregivers felt comfortable to talk about their experiences"
Identify Patterns
After talking to 5 participants (caregivers and parents). I encoded the audio interviews to find patterns using the affinity mapping method. I realized my insights from the discovery research aligns with interview themes. The interview insights suggest that usage of technology is specific for the individual needs – depends on age, diagnosis level, type of impairment, and gender in the areas of communication and learning, anxiety, and entertainment.
From this exploration, I discovered:
- Personalization technological experiences are required for autistic children.
- Experiences may need to be sensory dependent.
- Parents prefer to use technology to keep their children engaged.
- Parents give access to technology as a reward for their good behavior.
What is the trend?
Survey Research
With these in-depth insights received from interviews, and to validate these insights among a larger population, I conducted a survey. I gained permission from the Facebook group admin to post a survey in 14 Autism parents groups (across the US). I posted the survey on Saturday because I witnessed the group activity is maximum over the weekends.
Connect 19 Responses
The survey was active for 3 days and received 19 responses. The survey respondents were parents of autistic children distributed across the US.
Research Presentation
Persona
Based on the research from the survey and interview, I found that majority of the children face issues with addressing their emotions and use technology to cope with unpleasant behaviors. To give form to these insights, I made a persona to understand the children's needs, behavior, and expectations of children along with their parents.
User States and Contexts
Even though persona provided the needs, motivations of the users. However, I felt persona was not well-suited in capturing the diversity, variance on autistic children's needs, and preferences at a granular level. So, I used to map out the possible contexts and needs for a persona in a particular context. This mapping provides me an understanding of the following:
- Information on the abilities and inabilities of autistic children
- It provides information on changing needs based on context (environments)
- Emphasize the information with the device levels
Future Directions
An virtual assistant that aids in copying anxiety levels
A personalized gamefied application for daily routines
Visual aids to communicate concerns
Learnings
This was a research project in my first-year graduate program at ASU. This project gave me an opportunity to identify and conduct research with special communities. Here is what I have learned from this experience.
- Rapport with participants Talking with participants about sensitive topics is only possible after building trust with them. Creating a comfortable environment is important.
- Participant identification The most challenging area of this research is to draw more participants to participate. I announced my research objectives and informed them about information privacy in the advertisement to improve survey respondents.
- Time pressureI had only one week to conduct two methods and analyze the data. If I can think back I would have improved my follow-up questions to get more useful information for research.