Participatory design with children with autism

The COSPATIAL (Communication and social participation: collaborative technologies for interaction and learning) project explores how we can develop effective and useful educational technologies in the form of shared active surfaces (SAS) and collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) to support the enhancement of social skills for children on the autism spectrum. The UK design team comprises technology developers, design engineers, educational psychologists as well as teachers from both mainstream and autism specialist schools. A user centred design approach is used to make decisions and review prototype development using CVE technology. The team is then involved in detailed specification of CVE scenarios and iterative review of prototypes. The involvement of teachers throughout the entire process is crucial, but in order to understand the primary user further and implement concepts optimally it is also desirable to involve the target end users directly in the design process. This paper describes the participatory design approach for elicitation of user requirements and CVE scenario design that is being used with typically developing children and how these methods have been adapted to facilitate involvement of children on the autism spectrum.