Helping autistic people communicate during times of distress

Dr Dinah Murray

autismcommunicationmobile app
woman looking distressed covering her ears

What is the Autistic Space Kit?

Autistic Space Kit 2 is a co-designed tool for autistic people. It is a tool that provides quick-access support to people during periods of stress if they are experiencing a meltdown. It was funded by Dinah Murray. This tool would not only be helpful for Autistic people but for anyone who might have anxiety whilst out and away from home, especially during times of COVID-19.

The Problem

During times of stress or in highly stimulating environments, autistic people experience what can be known as a meltdown or sensory overload (if you’d like a more visual representation of this, you can view it here). Once in a meltdown state, it can be extremely difficult for an individual to communicate or engage in the world around them and ask for the appropriate support. Each person is different; some individuals might want a quiet space to recover, whereas some might prefer soothing activities.

This can make trips or being out and about stressful – you never know when a meltdown might occur, and often members of the public can struggle to understand what’s going on. We want to create an application to enhance users’ confidence when out and about and to know they can get easily supported when they need it.

How can a user get the right level of support when and how they need it?

Solution

Process

Passio followed a user-mapping activity: people with autism selected and prioritised which features of the application they wanted to be built at each stage (within the budget constraints). 

Features

Users can quickly open the app, which displays a message that they can show to the public explaining the situation.

The screen displays a customisable message when the user is feeling stressed.

Text location: If needed, the user can press the text location button. Doing this will send a location and a pre-set help message to a list of pre-set trusted contacts.

Call contact: The user can additionally opt to call a pre-defined trusted contact.

Finally, customisations! 

Set visible card text: The user can customise the text displayed on the Red, Yellow and Green message screens.

Set countdown timer:  The user can set the timing of the transitions from the red to yellow to green message screens. 

Set trusted contacts: Users can set a list of trusted contacts for the text location and call contact features to use. 

Set help message: Users can set the help message, which is sent via text to trusted contacts.