The concept I am developing

Grounded is a proposed airport-travel support service for autistic adults who want to travel independently and make their own decisions about support. Its purpose is to make changing journey information easier to interpret and connect it with practical, optional support. The app is the personal interface I am developing, while the wider idea depends on how personal information relates to airport signs, maps, staff and services.

This page defines the intended product as a whole for the first time. The screens and sketches show what I want to investigate; they do not show a working connection to an airport, a wearable that can identify support needs, or a system tested and approved by autistic travellers.

Why this problem matters to the audience

My project asks: “How might shared airport accessibility better respond to the individual sensory needs of adults on the autism spectrum travelling independently?” The word shared matters. A traveller’s experience is shaped by information and surroundings as well as personal preferences. An app cannot make a crowded terminal quiet or guarantee that staff are available. It can be designed to make information easier to find, show what is known, and let a traveller choose whether to access a next step, a route option or assistance.

My Critical Report combines a literature review with a questionnaire completed by ten self-declared autistic adults aged 18–64. Four themes emerged: independence and control, changing needs, the sensory environment and fragmented journey systems. The sample is small and self-selected, and only one question was explicitly airport-specific for every respondent. I treat these themes as prompts for design and further evaluation, not as a complete account of autistic adults or proof that one interface will work for everyone. The earlier research pages, GDE751: Week 10: What Autistic Adults Need from Air Travel. and GDE751: Week 10: What Makes Airport Support Genuinely Accessible?, develop the evidence on travel needs and accessible support.

This evidence leads to a central design principle: support should increase a traveller’s options without taking control away from them. Different people may want different support, and the same person may want different things at different moments. A clear gate update may be enough at one point. At another, the traveller may want a route, a written prompt to show someone, spoken directions or no additional support. I should not design one response and describe it as universally calming or accessible.

The brand goal

Help an independent traveller keep their bearings when airport information changes, through clear current facts and support they control.

This goal gives Grounded a specific job: connect a change in the journey with an understandable next action while preserving the traveller’s ability to choose how they receive help. It is not a promise to remove uncertainty or prevent distress. It describes the role the product should try to play.

The name Grounded suggests steadiness and orientation. That association needs care: it should not imply that the app can regulate a person or diagnose how they feel. The brand should feel adult, direct, warm and dependable. Its character and colour can add recognition, but operational information must remain the priority. This connects with the provisional voice direction on GDE751: Week 18: Voice & Identity.

What the service is meant to do

The app concept has five connected jobs:

1. Prepare a traveller’s journey. The person could add or select their flight, review key stages and choose how information is presented. A future version might let them save preferences such as text or audio directions, how they want prompts handled, or what wording they find useful when asking for help. Preferences should be optional, editable and usable without disclosing a diagnosis. These are design aims, not features already implemented.
2. Make a journey change legible. If a gate changes, the interface should identify the new information clearly, show the previous gate as previous, and state what the traveller can do next. In my fictional B12-to-A04 scenario, the change is a design event; it is not evidence that every autistic traveller finds gate changes difficult. My communication experiment compares a personal phone interface with shared airport information and a coordinated approach: GDE751: Week 18: Gate-Change Communication Approaches..
3. Offer choices that can be used independently. From an alert, the traveller might open the next practical step, review route information, find available sensory facilities or use a prepared assistance message. They should be able to dismiss a prompt and still see flight information. “Not now,” pause, change and stop are meaningful controls, not decorative details.
4. Support more than one communication mode. The visual interface should provide concise written information, with an optional spoken version for people who prefer to listen or cannot comfortably read the screen in that moment. Spoken support could read a selected instruction or route step, with replay, pause and volume controls. The app should not speak unexpectedly or assume headphones are being worn. A traveller could also choose a short written prompt to show staff. Audio, text and visual cues need to carry the same meaning.
5. Be truthful about information and help. A verified gate update, a proposed route and an assistance request have different statuses. The interface should show when data was last updated and make uncertainty visible. Preparing or sending a request must not look like confirmation that staff have accepted it. If the app cannot verify the gate or map, it should direct the traveller to an authoritative airport display or staff member rather than invent certainty.

How I imagine it working

The early sketches move the concept from a broad system idea towards a sequence a traveller could understand.