Designing an App to Help Individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities to Recognize Abuse

In the US, the abuse of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) is at epidemic proportions; however, the reporting of such abuse has been severely lacking. It has been found that individuals with I/DD are more aware of when and how to report abuse if they have received abuse prevention training. Consequently, in this paper we present the design of a mobile-computing app called Recognize to teach individuals with I/DD about abuse. Our research team is diverse, with both individuals with I/DD and neurotypical individuals. We leveraged this diversity by utilizing a co-design process with our team members who live with I/DD. Our team developed three initial prototypes of the app and performed a qualitative, within-group user study with six separate individuals with I/DD who are themselves experienced teachers to other individuals with I/DD. We found that, overall, the app would be viable for use by individuals with I/DD. We end the paper with a brief discussion of the implications of our findings toward building a full prototype of the app.