Team: Manali/ Svaney Shen/ Zhaolu Song
Brief: Design an Autistic children-friendly museum experience.
Time: July 2021
What is my FMP about?
A museum is not only a place for the conservation of objects but also a place to educate the public and affect individuals’ learning. For children, museums are active in shaping their knowledge by the display of artifacts and the visual and textual narratives produced (Hooper-Greenhill, 2007). Museum-based learning is becoming increasingly important for children. However, museums sometimes are sites of spectacle and have so many diverse collections, which can be too overwhelming and surprising to children with autism (Gaines et al., 2016). Hence, I want to create an inclusive museum experience for children with ASD.
‘Museum is supposed to be open for everyone, including children with autism.’
Autism (ASD), refers to a broad range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication (Autism speaks, 2020). A recent report shows, cases of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are rising and most of them are children (NHS Digital, 2019). This group of children should arouse our attention.
This final major project will create an autism-friendly museum environment for kids and families having special needs (especially mild autism) in the aspects of learning and socialization.
To achieve that, I plan to use multi-methods, from museum visiting, case study and literature review to shadowing, codesign and maybe even create myself design methods.
Methods for FMP
Why do I choose this topic?
Since I was young, I have been very interested in visiting museums. Museums, to me, are silent teachers who have an endless treasure of knowledge. Hence, I decided to design something related to museums.
My original idea is to create a playful learning experience by reshaping the interaction pattern between visitors and museum objects to adapt to the leisure trend in society. However, shortly after the definition of my proposal, I met Manali and Svaney, we are all interested in the museum experience and decided to work together. Yes, teamwork makes the best work.
‘Accessibility is not only about physical’
We all want to focus on one specific group of people. During our visits to museums, we noticed there are many accesses and equipment for the disabled, but we know that ‘not all disabilities are visible’. What about people with brain diseases like ASD? According to the research conducted by NHS Digital, most ASD people are children, and they are also important audiences in museums. Therefore, we decided to design for children with autism.
Plan for FMP
Feedback
The general feedback is that it is a great topic and truly worth us thinking about. However, there are also some worries, such as how we deal with the ethical problems about autism and how we reach out to these children. John also told us it is brave but also difficult to choose people with special needs as the target users. To be honest, I didn’t know the answers, but I will keep these in mind all the time when I work on the project. Besides, he advised us to start with several steps together, for example, ideate while observing. Ala suggested we think about what museum that we want to design with and the scale of the museum.
On-going? Yes!
As it is still the very beginning of our project, some details might be changed during the process of our research and design. In the next month, we will start with the research about autism and museum visiting to find out their pain points and design opportunities.
References
Autism speaks (2020) What Is Autism? Available at: https://www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism (Accessed: 28th June 2021).
Gaines, K. et al. (2016) Designing for Autism Spectrum Disorders. New York: Routledge.
Hooper-Greenhill, E. (2007) Museums and education: purpose, pedagogy, performance. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge.
NHS Digital (2019) Autism Statistic. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/autism-statistics (Accessed: 27th June 2021)
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