Design and Development for Individuals with ASD: Fostering Multidisciplinary Approaches Through Personas.
Write a one-page story about your learner, post it where every team member can see it, and let that story veto any feature that does not fit.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Silva et al. (2019) wrote a how-to paper for tech teams who build apps, robots, or wearables for people with autism.
They say: before you code, write a Persona family. A Persona is a short story about one real user. It lists age, goals, sensory issues, and favorite rewards.
The team keeps these stories on the wall so coders, engineers, and BCBAs all design for the same child, not for "autism in general."
What they found
The paper does not give numbers. It gives a checklist.
If the team follows the checklist, the final tool should match the child’s daily life better and the team should fight less over "what users want."
How this fits with other research
Lombardo (2021) takes the same idea but swaps stories for stats. Instead of a narrative Persona, V defines a "prototype" with cut-off scores on autism trait measures. The two papers agree: start with a clear profile, not the vague word "autism."
Bailey (2014) asked for tools that work across the lifespan. Persona families answer that call by forcing teams to list the user’s age, setting, and long-term goals.
Bouck et al. (2016) warn that we must measure what an intervention actually contains. Personas help here too: if the Persona says "sensitive to loud bells," you can later check if the app still has loud bells.
Why it matters
If you sit on an app-advisory board or help pick classroom software, demand Personas. Ask the vendor: "Show me the story of the child you tested with." No story, no buy. You will weed out tools built for mythical "average" kids and save your learners from another misfit app.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Developing technologies to support individuals with ASD is a growing field of research facing numerous challenges. First, while the individual with ASD is central, the motivations of others, such as parents, are often taken as the motivations of the individual. Second, the desirable cross-disciplinary pollination for improved intervention can often face difficulties due to a lack of a common language among disciplines. Thirdly, the literature often lacks enough information to allow a clear understanding of the targeted contexts and goals not enabling an assessment of outcomes and building on past advances. To tackle these challenges, we propose that families of Personas and scenarios are used throughout the design and development process, and as dissemination resources, and provide illustrative examples.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2019 · doi:10.1007/s10803-019-03898-1