Adaptive Context-Aware Planning Support for Students with Autism

Abstract

Managing university life is challenging for any student, including fast-paced self-reliant learning, first experiences with independent daily living, and the social demands of student life. These struggles are even more pronounced in students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), who might face additional difficulties, including interpersonal deficits, organisational challenges, lacking self-advocacy skills and sensory overload. This thesis uses a participatory design process to research how an adaptive, context-aware system could support students with autism in planning their student life, including managing time, tasks, stress and sensory stimulation. The first interviews resulted in a focus on intelligent planning systems with a low-effort interaction design. The design process will incrementally build towards intelligent support for personalised interactive scheduling as well as in-the-moment next-action recommendations that are context-aware and adaptive to data on the user’s stress level and sensory stimulation exposure.