Co-designing a Bespoken Wearable Display for People with Dissociative Identity Disorder

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is characterized by the presence of at least two distinct identities in the same individual. This paper describes a co-design process with a person living with DID. We first aimed to uncover the main challenges experienced by the co-designer as well as design opportunities for novel technologies. We then engaged in a prototyping stage to design a wearable display (WhoDID) to facilitate in-person social interactions. The prototype aims to be used as a necklace and enable the user to make their fronting personality visible to others. Thus, facilitating social encounters or sudden changes of identity. We reflect on the design features of WhoDID in the broader context of supporting people with DID. Moreover, we provide insights on co-designing with someone with multiple (sometimes conflicting) personalities regarding requirement elicitation, decision-making, prototyping, and ethics. To our knowledge, we report the first design process with a DID user within the ASSETS and CHI communities. We aim to encourage other assistive technology researchers to design with DID users.