The mutual exchange in the scientific community is always the basis as well as the guarantee for excellent research. This becomes especially exciting when new fields of research are jointly initiated and innovative projects and initiatives emerge from it. In this context, a full-day workshop took place on August 29, 2023 as part of this year’s INTERACT conference in York (United Kingdom), with the theme:
Technology Design to Promote Self-Determination of Neurodivergent People: Challenges and Opportunities
The INTERACT conference is one of the longest-running international conferences in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). It takes place every two years and this year’s conference was held under the motto “Design for Equality and Justice” and brought together experts in HCI research to discuss ethical, moral and legal aspects of computer science, as well as the products of computer science and inclusion.
Fitting this motto, we exchanged ideas with scientists about concrete requirements, challenges and the potential of developing technical systems for neurodivergent people and discussed new concepts and strategies. We focused in particular on people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and people with ADHD.
Our call for presenting own research ideas and results as well as sharing lively experiential reports and accounts with the community was followed by a total of 30 authors and co-authors, resulting in a workshop with 18 participants and eight exciting research contributions and two vivid and captivating reports of personal experiences. The interest in the topic was overwhelming, so the results are to be published in an expanded form and a channel for future exchange on the topic was established. In particular, the hitherto informal accounts of experiences will establish a new, inspiring format for publication and mutual exchange, as these were perceived as particularly valuable by the scientific community.
We look forward to further exchange in this context, the participation of experts in studies within the framework of our AutARK project, and the mutually beneficial inclusion of additional expertise in our research.
