A Design Thinking Process with 'Aspie': Developing a New Intervention for People with Asperger's Syndrome

Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger’s syndrome (AS), is an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that is characterized by significant deficiencies in social interaction and nonverbal communication, alongside restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. It differs from other autism spectrum disorders by its relative development of linguistic and cognitive AS is believed to show relatively higher average intellectual abilities, and normative cognitive functioning. The diagnosis of AS was, however, eliminated in “the 2013 fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)” and replaced with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder on a severity scale [1-5]. People with AS may not be as withdrawn around others, compared to those with other, more debilitating forms of autism; they tend to approach others, even if awkwardly. For example, without understanding or recognizing the listener’s feelings such as hope to change the topic of a conversation or end the conversation, a person with AS may have a long-winded and one-sided speech about a favorite topic [6,7]. This social awkwardness has been called “active but odd” [8,9]. This failure to have appropriate social interaction may appear as disregard for the emotion of other people, and may come across as insensitive. Grandin (2009) thus newly suggested how to interact with technology for people with AS [10]. For instance, building upon that what most people with AS appreciated is structure in their environment, their daily routines, and their social interactions, many have an affinity with technology, governed by complex rules that might be predictable. More recently, other than how to intervene people with AS, designers tried to look at the possibility to include people with AS in their design process to create new innovative ideas. In so doing, they were interested in the special thinking style represented as the visual-dominant thinking style in the AS people. People with AS tend to think and memorize the world as relevant photos [11]. In a similar manner, although it is not a picture-like memory, some people with AS are fact thinkers having great memory capability of verbal facts [10]. Such difference in the thinking style is often considered as one of the reasons for the communication problems in society, but the designer sees this awkward thinking style as the driving force for developing new and innovative ideas. Hanyang Med Rev 2016;36:11-16 http://dx.doi.org/10.7599/hmr.2016.36.1.11 pISSN 1738-429X eISSN 2234-4446