Research question. How can Grounded look recognisable and warm while making a changing airport journey easier for an autistic adult traveller to understand and act on?
Grounded is a proposed travel-information and optional-support service for autistic adults travelling independently through airports. When journey information changes, it helps a traveller see what is current, understand what has changed and choose what to do next.
The brand is for adults who want to retain control over their own journey. It should make useful information easier to find without assuming that every traveller wants the same amount of help, has the same sensory preferences or feels a particular way. The app can offer written guidance, optional spoken guidance and routes to support, but the traveller decides whether to use them.
Help independent travellers keep their bearings when airport information changes, through clear current facts and support they control.
A more connected airport journey in which changes are easier to understand and practical support is available by choice.
This is an ambition for the project, not a claim that Grounded can remove uncertainty, change airport conditions or guarantee a particular emotional outcome.
Maia’s Critical Report included a literature review and a questionnaire completed by ten self-declared autistic adults. It identified themes around independence and control, changing support needs, sensory environments and fragmented journey systems. These findings explain why Grounded is investigating clear updates, continuity and optional help. They do not establish that all autistic adults want a colourful interface, a mascot, audio or the same kind of reassurance. The sample is small and self-selected, and it did not test this identity.
That evidence sets a practical standard: the operational message must work without the decorative brand layer. A traveller should be able to identify the new gate, tell it apart from the previous gate, and understand the next available action without reading the mascot’s expression or interpreting a colour. Warmth can make the service more recognisable, but it cannot substitute for accurate information or user choice.
A useful identity is more than a logo or a palette. Reviewing official guidance from Apple and NHS digital services suggests that public-facing identities connect visual recognition with repeatable rules for content and interface behaviour. This is a synthesis of those systems rather than a universal checklist.
These are useful organisational and interface precedents, not direct evidence about autistic adults’ brand preferences. The project can learn from their consistency and explicit rules while testing its own tone and visuals with the intended audience.
The pages below document the reasoning in more depth. These are working decisions at different stages, not all final or user-tested.