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User testing
We are looking for autistic participants for a usability study to improve user experience of the AutSPACEs web platform.
Autistic people have sensory processing sensitivities and differences when compared to non-autistic people. These differences can make it difficult to navigate environments that were not built with autistic people in mind. For example, it can be stressful to taking a busy train during rush hour, or to attend an appointment in a brightly lit hospital waiting room.
AutSPACEs stands for Autism research into Sensory Processing for Accessible Community Environments and is a research project is run by The Alan Turing Institute with support of Autistica. Our goal is to co-create an online citizen science platform that will be used to investigate sensory proccessing and autism by learning from the lived experience of autistic people in their daily lives. Doing so will not only allow us to collect valuable research data, share the lived experiences with other autistic and neurotypical people and advise people on how they can design and adapt spaces to improve autistic people’s lives.
To achieve these goals we are creating an interactive website to collect written records of autistic people’s sensory processing processing experiences. Users are asked to write about their sensory processing experiences as well as their suggested solutions, strategies, recommendations or tips which makes or would have made your experience better please.
To ensure that the AutSPACEs web platform is fit for these purposes, we are looking for research participants that are willing to engage in a user testing session with us. These user testing sessions will take the form of a one hour long online video call on Zoom, in which you will be joined by one or two members of the AutSPACEs research team.
During this call you will be asked to interact with the AutSPACEs website prototype while sharing your screen. You will be asked some questions about the website and asked to do some tasks. The researcher will also take notes. This isn’t to assess your ability to do the tasks, but to work out how easy the website is to use and how it can be improved. There are no wrong answers or actions.
If you consent to it, the user testing will be recorded to allow a better analysis after the session. Only anonymized notes and lessons learned from your user testing session will be published in the research project's public repository of information. This anonymized data will then be used to inform the future development of the website to improve the AutSPACEs website.
As a thank you for your time and input, you will be given a £25 voucher after the user testing session. You can stop the session at any time and will still receive a voucher as a thank you for your time.
You can find more detailed information about the study in our Participant Information Sheet. This study has been approved by the The Alan Turing Institute’s Ethics Committee on July 21, 2023.
For our user testing study, we are looking for up to 20 autistic participants. To be eligible to participate you need to be at least 18 years old.
To participate, please email Georgia Aitkenhead at gaitkenhead@turing.ac.uk. We will then schedule a date & time with you for the user testing session that is convenient for you.
Our Participant Information Sheet outlines more information about this specific study. You can also read our consent form. If you want to learn more about the AutSPACEs project in itself, you can also visit our additional documentation.