MAPPS

For the capstone project of my master's degree (and for months after), I designed an iPad app targeted at helping families who have children with autism to plan their visit to the Children's Museum of New Hampshire. When I started the project, the families would plan their visit once they arrived in a workshop room with paper slips and a glue stick. There were some issues with this approach (running out of paper slips, the tactile issues with glue sticks, and having little/no pre-visit interaction). 

Project Goals

I wanted to reduce the anxiety around bringing a family with special needs to a museum. Museums have brought me a lot of happiness and fond memories of visits with my own family.

To that end, I worked with museum staff to come up with a basic set of requirements for a picture-based planning tool. Having the planning done in advance allows the family to rehearse the visit which can relax the child and parents and prevent unneeded anxiety. To further develop the ideas, I observed the families visiting during special museum hours set aside for children with autism. When I had developed the prototype, I returned to study how the children reacted to being able to use the iPad to plan the visit.

Setbacks

There wasn’t a point of reference for an app like this. Special needs audiences vary so greatly and are terribly underserved. Finding the staff for this project was all-volunteer and was my responsibility to recruit a team of developers, quality assurance engineers, and business analysts and keep them motivated with no budget.

Teamwork

I was fortunate to find select people from my daytime job to join the project team. I designed the interfaces, performed usability testing, and managed the project. I worked most closely with a front-end developer to get a workable prototype so that we could use it as a proof of concept to get other museums interested and raise funds to continue.