As I have been catching the Studio Practice blog up, I have realised that the project now contains several very different kinds of research. There is the original work around autism and independent travel, airport accessibility, primary research, sensory regulation, biosignals, wearables, biofeedback, AI and now neuroadaptive technology.
If I simply present these in the order I discovered them, the final document risks feeling fragmented.
I therefore need to structure the Studio Practice around the logic of the project, not only the chronology of the weeks.
The beginning of the narrative needs to establish why the project exists before introducing any technology.
This means starting with the wider context of autistic adults travelling independently, the barriers identified across airport journeys and the limitations of current accessibility provision. My primary research then becomes important because it shows how independence, unpredictability, sensory demand and fragmented systems are experienced by actual travellers.
From there, the project can move naturally into sensory regulation.
This is the point where the design problem changes from asking how an airport could remove every difficult stimulus towards asking how the traveller could have more control over their own experience.
Once regulation has been established as the design focus, the biosensing research makes much more sense.
Rather than suddenly introducing HRV and wearable technology because they seem interesting, I can show that they emerged from a specific problem: support needs can fluctuate and existing airport provision cannot continuously respond to those changes.
This creates a clearer sequence:
changing need → regulation → physiological information → responsive support.
That connection is important because it keeps the technology rooted in the research problem.
I have also realised that some of the technological language needs separating into distinct sections.
Biosignals are the physiological information produced by the body.
Biosensing is how that information is detected or measured.
Biofeedback is how physiological information is made available to the user or system.