Collaborative Process

To design for people with Autism, you need to talk to people with Autism.

There have been a number of significant developments in my project since last week. First of all, I finally interviewed someone with Asperger's for the project, which was enlightening and incredibly helpful. Second, I met some people from the Moses Center for Disabilities and I am in email communication with them in search of some people with ASD to consult in the creative process. Third, I am meeting with Professor Burleson of NYU-X tomorrow to discuss the next steps of working with him and how my project could fit into his lab. Now that I have some silly prototypes, I can pitch them a little more clearly.

Motivational speaker Jesse Saperstein was kind enough to hang out with me for a few hours to talk about his experiences with Asperger's. We went to Five Guys, we talked at the Ability Lab for 2 hours, and then we played a few games of street fighter. It was totally awesome.

Here are some key insights from Jesse:

• Automatic stimming may not be helpful
• Stimming: He does it when he is excited, but he already knows he is excited and he could easily stop.
• He recognizes the consequences of over-reacting and chooses to "behave appropriately."
• Mustard and waste: these are triggers for Jesse.
• Games: he would imagine that he was in the video game.
• Reward for behaving: you get to do a silly dance for making the right choice. Jesse had a cool dance move that he did during his presentation and when talking to me.
• moveable chair could be cool- but he doesn't see a chair as being helpful
• He needs a place where you feel accepted- where you don't have to try so hard
• He and significant other have complimentary strengths; they help each other with what the other person is not good at.
• People take advantage of people with ASD.
• "You are an adult first and a person with Asperger's second."
• Talked about distracting behavior with Autism. There is a place where he needs to draw the line.
• Patience: mistake cannot be unforgivable. He has to be able to fix it when he has messed up.
• Destruction room could be cool.
• An online support network for ASD could be helpful.
• Jesse felt most accepted in a place where his contributions were valued over his mistakes: on a team where his skills/determination were helpful.

Based on my talk with Jesse, it is likely possible to create something for teens and adults to function more easily in neurotypical school and work environments, but it will probably look really different from the auto-stimming wearable device I was imagining. That said, the wearable idea may still be useful to someone other than Jesse, so I'm not ready to completely abandon it. The major problems for Jesse, whose sensory issues seem to be less significant that Paul's, seem to be managing reactions to upsetting situations, letting go of obsessive thoughts that make other people uncomfortable, and remembering detailed administrative tasks.

I spoke with one of the teachers for Tech Kids Unlimited following my interview/visit with Jesse about ideas that might be helpful in the TKU classroom that would tie together some of the running threads of my research: social/behavioral management, accessing mind through the body, responsive tech that assists when you need it, solid/fluid structures. Based on Jesse's insights, I think some sort of social behavior tracking game could be useful, something that rewards you for making the difficult choices about expressing yourself "appropriately" with a moment where you don't have to be so appropriate. This could be a cool wearable device, or a handheld game where you get points for expressive or really free movements. Alternatively, it could be a fantasy game using VR and kinect, where you get to go into the game or a break from other people. Sam and I also came up with the idea of a cube that has different games at each level that get unlocked in response to finishing detail-oriented tasks or avoiding meltdowns. Sam also suggested that a larger sensory keyboard could be helpful to TKU students. Sometimes, it can be challenging for them to move the mouse to the desired location on the screen or hit the right keys. We thought a keyboard that is larger, requiring more full-body movements, might be helpful.

Questions for Jesse

Notes from Jesse's talk. There are more.

Brainstorming Ideas

To begin making some prototypes, I sketched out some crazy ideas for the chair, the game, and the wearable device. I decided that the chair would just be too crazy to make in one semester with no background in furniture design or production. Also, Jesse wasn't excited about it, so I'll probably just drop it. I decided to make some pipe-cleaner prototypes of the other two, though.

Chair Idea Sketches

Wearable Idea Sketches

Game Idea Sketches

To prototype the wearable idea, I wanted to see where this device could go on the body and what it would feel like to have a device in those places. I took inspiration from my experiences in contact improvisation for the places of contact. I wanted the device to feel supportive, so I placed it in locations that are good for lifting and catching a person's weight. I only prototyped one side of the waist because I ran out of the right color pipe-cleaners.

The idea is that memory wire could be used to solidify and pull the person into a neutral/calm position if their heart rate was too elevated or if their breathing became to heavy. Another idea is that the torso piece could contain a coil of wire that generates a magnetic field when a current is run through it. Then, the coils would repel the magnets in the arm pieces with an inverse square force. This would create a similar sensation to contact improvisation with no other person or risk, because the force on your arms would be responsive to your movements.

There are a few threads in this idea. First, this could be a movement training device for people with ASD to learn to refine and respond to forces of movements to be able to move more fluidly. Second, this could provide sensory stimuli in times of excitement/agitation that could be calming to help manage reactions to external factors. At the same time, I see this idea as a kind of chindogu response to attempts to contain ASD maladaptive behaviors: here is a wearable device that turns your natural movement expression into something more palatable to neurotypical people, highlighting the need to change this mentality, providing an almost solution that helps to define the problem somewhat ironically. This is clearly more of an art piece on the idea of assistive technology and cultural understandings of "ability."

Front View

Side View

Back/Side View

For the game idea, I am thinking of multiple particles that make up a system that unlocks different levels of challenge. I had been thinking of a cub that has different kinds of tasks/games built into it. This seems a little comparable, so I decided to simplify it, keeping in mind that the body is the medium. This idea is basically a set of 6 wii's that sit in a cradle on a person's desk. It would be cool if they were 6 different shades of wood with electronics inside. They should fit together to create some kind of sleek structure that just looks cool on a desk. Then, if you pick them up, they could have accelerometers and vibration motors in them to sense/interpret your movements.

So if these are the controllers, what are the games? I have a few ideas based on what can be tracked with accelerometers. There could be more intellectual games that require rearrangments of objects (think Towers of Hanoi with colors instead of size). There could also be task-specific movements that have to be executed. There could also be open movement tasks. I think free-form movements that accomplish a particular quality could be a fun way for people with ASD to take a break from being so composed. Maybe movements that are expressive of particular emotions could give someone more points. I took a stab at quantifying quality with two games below.

Game Arrangement

Game Arrangement

Game Controller

Below is a visualization where I tried out calculating position based on just acceleration and initial position, which is what is done with accelerometers. I also created the shapes to help visualize spikes in acceleration and jerk (the third derivative of motion). This is an initial exploration of the idea.

And here are two games that you can play with your mouse. In one, you score points for forceful movements, but you lose them if you go too fast. In the other, you score points for fast movements that are fluid (not jerky). Try them out.

Smooth Mouse Game and Rough Mouse Movement Game

This is a link to the Power Point for my presentation today.