Designing Spectrums: The Sensory World of Autism and Its Design Implications
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How do sensory sensitivities alter autistic people's perception of the world, and how as designers can an increased literacy in these sensitivities lead to more inclusive and equitable design practices? The way we percieve the world is crafted through our senses, and if those senses change, so does our world. As landscape architects we design spaces for people through an assumption of the normative self and experience without taking into account the multiplicity of diverse neurological and sensory experiences. However, 1 in 15 people in the world are considered neurodivergent, and 1 in 44 on the autism spectrum. This neurodivergence means that the experience of the world most designers are familiar with is not theirs, and therefore, that the world wasn't designed for them. This thesis, by pushing new understandings of autism, generating new methods of landscape analysis, and a visual language to represent an autistic sensorial experience, new understandings can be generated within neurotypical designers and lead to more mindful and inclusive design of the public realm.