Collaborative Design for Young Children with Autism: Design Tools and a User Study

This paper provides an overview of a collaborative design effort that involves computer scientists, psychologists, and designers working together to investigate design methods to help in the creation of technology to people with cognitive disabilities. The focus of this effort was in developing techniques to help novice designers create technology interfaces to support anger management in young people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The primary output for designers is a card set for which each card has a claim about an anger management technique that can help young people. Design activities leveraging scenarios and personas are suggested that leverage the card set in the creation of technology interfaces. This paper introduces the card set and supporting techniques, describes a design session in an undergraduate classroom setting, and speculates about future directions for this work.