The team began by exploring what is.
Even though we know that our physical environment has an impact on us,
existing research to date had not focused
on the relationship between people with autism and their environment.
Their relationship with items in the environment might be very different,
even with respect to everyday items,
such as toasters and washing machines.
For example, a washing machine might
provide pleasure to a person observing its spinning motion.
And a toaster might trigger anxiety because of the toast popping up unexpectedly.
With this realization in mind,
Katie conducted several studies over a period of several years;
one for the design of the outdoor space,
the other for the everyday activities project.
For both projects, she created a range of
creative activities and used various ethnographic tools.
To develop a better understanding of residents' sensory preferences,
Katie took well-established sensory profile questionnaires
and adapted them into a set of visual sensory preference cards.
For people who had difficulty communicating likes and dislikes verbally,
the cards provided a way to indicate their likes and dislikes.
The card succeeded because they gave the participants
with autism a chance to express themselves in ways that
they had not before giving them more control and
independence to describe likes and dislikes.
But they also helped support
staff and families to come up with insights they were previously
unable to recognize and to learn more about the people they
supported facilitating changes in their daily practices.
As they looked for insights from this research,
it became clear to the design team that
these everyday activities involved a series of steps,
each with a potential draw or obstacle.
If the obstacle could be understood and removed or an interest added,
the task might become more attractive.
Pinpointing which part of an activity the person with autism
finds difficult and detecting where an activity a person may
need extra prompts and support helps identify what needs to be
adapted or designed differently to compliment a person's capabilities,
Katie explained to us.
For example, if a person dislikes a toaster because the toast pops up without warning,
someone might be able to time the popping to give
a warning indicator of when it will happen.
A small thing, like setting a timer,
could solve the challenge and facilitate the task.
Katie described to us one of the insights that came to her as
she first observed Pete, a resident.
The first time Katie visited Pete at home,
she saw him involved in a series of
seemingly destructive acts: picking at a leather sofa,
ripping a magazine, and creating indents in a wall by rubbing his head against it.
She focused on documenting Pete's behavior and wondered how she would
help to design solutions that would prevent it in the future.
But on Katie's second visit to Pete's house,
unable to ask Pete directly what he liked about these things,
Katie mirrored several of Pete's behaviors so she could experience them for herself.
To her surprise, Katie discovered the sense of
sensory enjoyment that came from ripping the pages of a magazine,
picking up the leather couch,
or holding her ear against the wall.
Picking at the couch or ripping magazine pages offered
the same sensory pleasures that some
might experience when bursting bubbles in bubble wrap.
Vibrations from the music offered
a pleasant sensation when you pressed your head against the wall.
On her first visit to his home,
Katie had used her own frame of reference and
labeled Pete's acts as negative and destructive.
On her second visit,
she began to truly empathize with Pete.
The sofa, wall, and music revealed vital
clues that helped her understand the things Pete liked to do.
She explained, "I thought empathy was innate,
but now realized that it can grow and evolve.
For this to happen,
it requires a perceptual shift in
thinking that is open to different ways of being in the world."
I hope these few examples have deepened your understanding of
the importance and the power of the What is?
question. Now, let's take a look at how the Kingwood Trust worked through what if,
what wows, and what works.
Jeanne M. LiedtkaUnited Technologies Corporation Professor of Business Administration
