Designing smart objects with autistic children: Four design exposès

C Frauenberger, J Makhaeva, K Spiel - … of the 2016 CHI conference on …, 2016 - dl.acm.org
C Frauenberger, J Makhaeva, K Spiel
Proceedings of the 2016 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems, 2016dl.acm.org
This paper describes the design work being conducted as part of the OutsideTheBox project.
Within the time-frame of eight months, we engaged four children with autism in a
participatory design process to develop their own smart object. We re-interpreted Future
Workshops and Co-operative Inquiry to demonstrate that a) autistic children can lead
processes with a deliberately open design brief and b) this leads us to explore design
spaces that are un-imaginable for neuro-typical, adult designers. To capture these four …
This paper describes the design work being conducted as part of the OutsideTheBox project. Within the time-frame of eight months, we engaged four children with autism in a participatory design process to develop their own smart object. We re-interpreted Future Workshops and Co-operative Inquiry to demonstrate that a) autistic children can lead processes with a deliberately open design brief and b) this leads us to explore design spaces that are un-imaginable for neuro-typical, adult designers. To capture these four design cases, we have developed Design Exposes, a concept that is inspired by annotated portfolios and Actor-Network Theory. We apply this concept to our cases and present four exposes that subsequently allow us to draw out intermediate-level design knowledge about co-creating technology with autistic children. We close by critically reflecting on the design processes as well as our concept of capturing them.
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