The research question has changed several times throughout the project, which reflects how much the project itself has narrowed.
The earliest versions were much broader and focused on independent international travel as a whole. At that stage I was interested in barriers to travel, transformative experiences and the wider question of whether autistic adults have equal access to independent travel opportunities.
As the research progressed, airports became the clearest point of focus.
The primary research and airport-specific literature made it increasingly difficult to justify keeping the whole international travel experience within one Master's project.
Airports bring together many of the barriers I had been researching: unpredictability, sensory intensity, navigation, changing information, queues, staff interaction and different procedures between locations.
This gave me a much more defined context to investigate.
One of the stronger working questions became:
How might shared airport accessibility better respond to the individual sensory needs of adults on the autism spectrum travelling independently?
This question helped focus the project on the tension between shared accessibility provision and individual sensory need.
The introduction of physiological sensing and bioresponsive technology then changed the project again.
The report was no longer only evaluating what airports currently provide. It was also beginning to investigate whether support could become more responsive to fluctuating need.
I considered wording around adaptive immersive technology and physiological biofeedback, but I was cautious about allowing the technology to dominate the question too early.
If I name one specific technology in the research question, I risk making the report prove a solution I have already selected.
The research question needs to describe the design problem strongly enough that different technological responses can still be evaluated against it.
The report title has therefore become more specific without turning into a product description.
The current title is: