Notes & Ideas from my meeting today.

Sarah also suggested returning to my Week 8 “Identifying Barriers” research, particularly the question I ended with:

Where does the current passenger experience break down, despite all of these existing interventions?

This feels important because I have already identified lots of things airports are doing, but I now need to show why these interventions still do not fully solve the problem.

A useful way of thinking about this is: I cannot necessarily change the external airport environment, but could design help change the traveller’s internal experience of it?

Technology

If I go down a technology route, which I feel all my research is pointing towards now, why is it that VR seems to feel like the right outcome? There are lots of types of tech, so why this? I need to investigate VR versus other technologies and properly justify why VR might offer something different.

The question should not be “how can I make an app?” There are already apps, maps, Social Stories, airport guides and journey-planning tools.

Instead, I need to ask:

• What can VR do that an app cannot?
• Does immersion allow greater sensory control?
• Could it help with regulation rather than simply giving information?
• Could it allow repetition and familiarisation in a way a normal screen cannot?
• Could an experience adapt to the individual rather than providing the same support to everyone?

This links to my research showing that autistic travellers have different and changing sensory/support needs, meaning a personalised approach may be more appropriate than one universal intervention

Why Regulation?

The reasoning needs to be clear: I have looked at current airport interventions such as sensory spaces, Sunflower schemes, Social Stories, maps and virtual tours. These can help, but there are still limitations.

Airports cannot remove every:

• delay
• gate change