Design your life: Bringing the autistic lifeworld to supportive technology design

Johannes Cornelis van Huizen

Research output: ThesisPhD Thesis - Research UT, graduation UT

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Abstract

Supportive technology can help autistic young adults manage everyday challenges related to sensory processing, communication, and/or executive functioning. The uptake remains limited, however, in part due to the prevailing medical model of autism on which many of these devices are based. Low- and hi-tech technologies attempt to make autistic individuals behave in more neurotypical ways. These technologies – as well as the medical model of autism – have been criticised for the unnecessary pathologisation of certain autistic traits and the reluctance to consider environmental factors that contribute to every-day challenges. In response, this thesis explores an alternative neurodiversity approach to supportive technology design. Rather than viewing autism as a ‘disorder’, the neurodiversity model understands autism as a different way of being. This helps formulate a new goal for supportive technology design: not to compensate for a perceived ‘deficit’, but to become a supportive, integral part of the embodied practices of autistic end users.

The scientific contribution this research seeks to make is four-fold. First, it seeks to understand the full experience of being autistic, and how supportive technologies can seamlessly integrate into that experience. Second, it explores how to put autistic individuals in charge of their own design process. Third, it examines how exactly supportive technology design can help empower autistic individuals. And, finally, it explores how design research can offer a critical perspective to enrich our conceptual understanding of autism. These four research objectives were examined in the Design Your Life research project, centred around a toolkit that helps end users design their own supportive devices.

Participants in this research ideated personalised, unexpected devices to meet their support needs, albeit sometimes hampered by the lack of technical knowledge and machinery. This research furthermore elucidates a range of ways in which supportive technology design can contribute to empowerment – as conversation mediators, sense-making tools, and as ‘knowledge objects’; to help non-autistic peers better understand what it entails to be autistic. Overall, this research’s findings introduce new valuations of supportive technology design by autistic young adults, which may also inspire healthcare professionals to explore design-oriented approaches in their care practices.
Original languageEnglish
QualificationDoctor of Philosophy
Awarding Institution
  • University of Twente
Supervisors/Advisors
  • van der Voort, Mascha C., Supervisor
  • Staal, W.G., Supervisor, External person
  • van Dijk, Jelle, Co-Supervisor
Award date11 Dec 2024
Place of PublicationEnschede
Publisher
Print ISBNs978-90-365-6316-1
Electronic ISBNs978-90-365-6317-8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Nov 2024

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