This research project encompasses the development of a research methodology, by the case study of 'Youniversum'.

Youniversum is an app in development to support children with autism in their communication skills and understanding of emotions.  Me was asked to investigate this app with regards to usability, which ended up with 2 deliverables; a paper describing a methodology to execute usability research with children with autism, as well as a report that identified the bottlenecks and provided advice for improvement of the app.

Achievements

As the app had different accounts (child, parent/therapist), and the children needed a specific approach to involve them in a usability research process, a multidimensional approach is developed. This methodology takes into account the possibilities and limitations that autism entails. Therefore a stepwise method has been built by literature study and involvement of their network, funneling towards specific topics of investigation. Those topics of investigation were 'understanding of icons & graphics' and 'meaning & preference of navigation'.

Finally, 2 workshops are developed to address the usability with regards to those topics, supportive to the interests of this children and carefully tailored taking into accounts the limitations of this user group. In each workshop, 4 children were happily involved and the outcomes were very usefull.

This methodology could be a very helpful tool for other designers who are not that used to involve 'special' user groups. From a broader perspective, the steps taken in this multidimensional approach, can be used and adjusted to other special user groups as well, when taking into account the characteristics of that user group.

The paper written about this research project contains too much private information to expose on the web. You are welcome to ask me about it in person.