Meeting Zach and Keegan

As Keegan and Zach were both low-functioning on the autism spectrum, we conducted an observational study at HARP. As a notetaker for Keegan, I noted down his attention span, his interests, and the way he expressed emotions through motions and sounds.

Main Learnings:

• Keegan likes colors and abstract art; Zach likes precise, monochromatic lines.

• Both Zach and Keegan love art in an independent way.

• They aren’t friends at all.

How might we bring delight to both Zach and Keegan while allowing them to be creative in their own unique ways?

What if we turned art into a physical experience?

Physicality: Giant Art Supplies

Keegan and Zach liked to incorporate physical activities, like carrying heavy backpacks, to keep themselves calm. We created two big markers of different sizes and two large pipe cleaners to bring this large movement into drawing and crafting.

Results: Both wanted to spend as little time with this as possible.

Keegan didn’t want them at all. Zach drew something out of obligation with the giant marker but then asked for the cap back so he could put it away.

What if we turned the creative process into a game?

Gamification: Prompted Drawing

As their current art time was completely unstructured, we wanted to see if they cared for prompts. We made colored cards with a written prompt on each to draw something specific. Our second variation includes a colored cube that they can toss before picking a colored card.

Results: Refusal from Keegan, “meh” from Zach.

Keegan refused to interact with the cards or the cube. Zach tried a few prompts and drew the prompted items on the cards, but did not seem to be delighted in the slightest.

What if we took what they already loved to draw, and mixed it up?

Inspiration: Mix-and-Match Blocks

Both kids like to draw cartoon characters, sometimes repeatedly. We hoped that an interactive mix-and-match would inspire their current artistic process. We took their favorite cartoon characters to create two versions of mix-and-match blocks. The first was a set of three cubes with a larger “scenery” cube. The second was a stick with blocks that spun with a satisfying sound.

Results: A hit with Keegan! … but Zach didn’t care.

Keegan played with all four blocks and even used his own crayon to add to the landscapes and color in characters. Zach was entertained by the spinning version for a minute, but soon put it down to draw something else that was on his mind.

 Introducing Zach and Keegan’s Imagination Station!

We built from our most successful prototype to create a personal space for Keegan and Zach to be immersed in their own independent processes. Our core features included…

Delivering Delight

Zach and Keegan prefer relaxed environments and can get overstimulated by loud noises or fanfare, so we kept our delivering experience simple.

• Anticipation — We set the scene with certain panels, and wrapped up our cubes in superhero wrapping paper.

• Reinforcing Privacy — We included personalized drawing kits to reinforce the idea that the Imagination Station is a separate space.

• Relaxed Creativity — With a few of their favorite snacks and a short demonstration, we created a relaxing space with our product as the focus.

Next Steps

While we worked hard to ensure that our product would be usable in the long term, we have some next steps in mind if given the opportunity to continue: creating a nicer storage box for everything, slightly smaller cubes, more customizable panels, and higher quality building materials. Additionally, we would love to observe how our Imagination Stations were used over a longer period of time, to see if they remained attractive and fun past the initial introduction.

My Takeaways

This project was a delight to work on, and unlike anything else I’ve ever tried before. It was refreshing and challenging to focus on creating delight.

The main challenges I had were:

• Designing for and measuring “delight” — Since delight is such a personal thing, we observed how Zach and Keegan expressed their emotions and created a rubric to measure if our product delighted them.

• Inclusive design through physical affordance — Our kids were both low-functioning on the spectrum, so we carefully observed and accounted for their cognitive/physical abilities throughout the process.

• Building one product for two very different people — Prototype testing revealed that they liked very different things. In order to accommodate this without forcing them out of their comfort zone, we turned to a customizable product. 

Designing for autistic individuals meant that we had to cast out our own ideas of what might be fun or joyful. We learned how Keegan and Zach expressed their emotions in their unique ways as they navigated the world. During our process, we realized that we could not ask two different people to enjoy the same things. In order to capture real delight, we designed something that would help them to do what already delights them the most, in a simple form that they could use. Creating a high quality, physical product that would actually be used by kids challenged me to think to be very meticulous about quality, affordance, and safety. 

Special thanks to Zach and Keegan, Professors Lorie Loeb and Thalia Wheatley, Jessica Poludin (Program Director at HARP), and my wonderful teammates for making this possible.