When Empathy Is Not Enough: Assessing the Experiences of Autistic Children with Technologies

Capturing and describing the multi-faceted experiences autistic children have with technologies provides a unique research challenge. Approaches based on pragmatist notions of experience, which mostly rely on empathy, are particularly limited if used alone. To address this we have developed an approach that combines Actor-Network Theory and Critical Discourse Analysis. Drawing on this approach, we discuss the experiences autistic children had with technologies resulting from the collaborative design process in the OutsideTheBox project. We construct a holistic picture of the experience by drawing on diverse data sources ranging from interviews to log-data, and most importantly, the first-hand perspective of autistic children. In four case studies, we demonstrate how this approach allowed us to develop unique individual and structural insights into the experiences of autistic children with technology.