A large part of this week has been spent bringing my secondary research and primary research together for the Critical Report. Although this has meant less visible design production, writing the report has actually changed the project quite significantly because it has forced me to explain why each direction has emerged rather than simply following what feels interesting.
The biggest benefit has been seeing the research as a connected argument rather than a collection of separate papers.
One of the clearest changes has been how I now understand independence. At the beginning of the project, independent travel could easily have been interpreted as travelling without assistance. The research has challenged that assumption.
Both the literature and my primary research suggest that independence can involve having support available while still retaining choice, agency and control. This is particularly important because one participant described wanting help without having to embarrass themselves by asking staff, while still wanting to remain independent.
This means the design goal should not be to remove support. It should be to make support easier to access without taking control away from the traveller.
Independence is becoming a question of control rather than complete self-sufficiency.
A second important shift is that support needs appear to change throughout the same journey.
My interview responses repeatedly connected difficulty with unexpected changes, disrupted routines and having to adapt quickly. The secondary research also shows that sensory responses are affected by context, predictability and perceived control.
This makes a fixed accessibility solution feel increasingly limited. A person may need very little support at one stage of the airport and significantly more at another.
The problem therefore is not only that autistic people have different needs from one another. The same person may have different needs at different moments.
Earlier in the project I focused heavily on reducing difficult sensory input within airports. I still think environmental design is extremely important, but the report has made me recognise the limits of designing for stimulus reduction alone.
Airports are complex shared environments. Noise, crowds, announcements, movement and unexpected change cannot all be removed, and reducing every form of stimulation would not suit every autistic person anyway.
This pushed me towards regulation as a more useful design focus. Rather than asking whether I can make an airport completely calm, I am now asking how the traveller might have more control over their own sensory and regulatory experience while moving through it.
The report also helped me see that the airport problem is not confined to one location.
Participants described the cumulative effect of different barriers, and one described how every airport works differently. Existing support is often divided between separate services, spaces, staff interactions and stages of the journey.