The activities and topics discussed in each meeting responded to specific challenges and goals. The table below breaks down the main results of each meeting. Take into account that these do not include the meetings where co-design activities were developed.
During the first couple of meetings, Mona shared about her life and herself. She works with people who do research related to autism. After the pandemic, her routine changed and it was difficult to adapt to working from home but now she is used to it again. However, she doesn't like it. She has been working there from July 2018 and before that she worked on several things related to disabilities. She was an advocate for disabled people at an organisation. Her favorite thing about her job is the fact that she can share her own experiences related to autism to help research. She enjoys cycling, watching TV, listening to music. She wants to learn an instrument but she does not have time to pursue this passion due to work. She is also a member of a political party. She shares activities like cycling with other people but she mostly likes to do these on her own as it is relaxing for her.
From the meetings we did understand that she is very good at focussing on details, which is experienced by a lot of people with autism. When we asked her about how she experiences autism and what it means for her, she answered that she finds it important that people realise that all people with autism experience it differently. Autism could for instance influence a need for a clear schedule, but the manner in which scheduling is needed is different for each person. This means that, when designing a product, it could be really beneficial to make it somewhat customizable.
Another challenge she experiences is difficulty with planning and creating a schedule for herself. She does procrastinate quite a lot and at the end of the day she is not likely to finish what she intended to do. Apps have been invented for this but she told us “I don't really like these planning apps for people with autism because they are often too detailed. For example, if this app tells me to do the dishes in 5 minutes but it takes 10 then the planning for the rest of the day doesn't work anymore.” This again, highlights that autism is very personal and cannot be generalised.
Meetings'
insights
When communicating with others, she has a tendency to repeat herself, according to her because she cannot tell when people have understood her point. She told us that she needs confirmation to understand whether someone has understood her. She does experience this way less when sending emails or texting, since she can read it over and over again, making sure her point is clear.
The Participant
To get insight into what Mona’s limitations are, we were constantly interviewing and co-designing with her. After every meeting, we got to know more about her and were able to adjust our design challenge and persona accordingly. The following section collects the information obtained from each meeting.
Scenarios
Based on the interaction with the participant, two main challenges she faces in daily life were concluded. The first one is that she gets easily distracted which leads to her not following her daily planning. The reason for this could be that when she experiences too many stimuli, she cannot keep her concentration on the task at hand. The second challenge is her difficulty in reading non-verbal communication. When interacting with others, she often cannot tell whether they have understood her. This leads to her repeating herself several times until she gets explice assurance or confirmation that she was understood. The two storyboards visualise these challenges in the next page.
Design Challenge 1.0
Even though two challenges were identified to cause the most inconvenience in Mona’s life, she clearly indicated her preference for the communication challenge. The team agreed with this for several reasons. One of them being that the difficulty in reading non-verbal cues is a common trait in many individuals with autism. This has not been addressed extensively with medical practices, and even less from a design approach. Furthermore, social interactions result in an important aspect for all individuals. Thus ensuring everyone is able to connect with others through verbal and physical interactions becomes an imperative for those shaping people’s context.
As mentioned, many individuals with autism, including the participant, face difficulties in recognising non-verbal communication which leads to strained interactions. This difficulty may also stem from experiencing a sensory overload at the time. This conclusion, resulted from the context mapping phase and allowed us to formulate the first version of the design challenge:
“The final product aims to facilitate communication between the user and others involved in the interaction by providing some form of assistance when dealing with non-verbal cues. “
Based on all interactions with the participant, a compilation of her traits, motivations, desires, context and work have been compiled into a persona.