Preliminary studies on exploring autistic sensory perception with sensory ethnography and biosensors

Abstract

More than anybody else, individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) easily suffer from environmental stimuli and sensory overloads due to their particular sensory perceptual systems which also cause attention related problems as well as communication difficulties in everyday lives. In our previous interaction design explorations for augmenting attention of autistics, we suggested that it would be beneficial to keep track of autistics’ individual differences and needs, and provide information accordingly [1]. Even though the existing methods that examine autistic sensory perception provide extensive knowledge, they are insufficient to provide in-depth user specific live data for a learning and a sensory-aware system which satisfy such particular differences. Thus, as we carry on ideating attentive user interfaces for autistics, our current studies focus on possible research methods which can access sensory perceptual data in individual levels. Here in this paper, we share our preliminary insights from the studies on exploring sensory ethnography and, depending on our three ongoing and interconnected prototypical studies, we suggest that this can reveal and represent novel ways of seeing the already known information of how autistics perceive the world and insights for the design of a sensory ethnography tool.