Autism Friendly Campus: Extend Your Comfort Zone



Place : Kule (Tower) 2. Floor

Date : 26.10.2018

Time : 10.00 (A.M.)

Duraton : 3 hours

Moderators : Zeynep Yıldız, Doğa Çorlu, Kemal Kuşcu, Asım Evren Yantaç

Number of Participants: 12

Language : English

Purpose:

Purpose of this workshop is;

  • raising awareness for inclusive design and design for disabling environments.
  • experiencing research through sensory walks and observation.
  • creating an autism-friendly campus deep map using insights from observation.

Content:

The aim of this workshop is to create an experience to allow participants to gain insights regarding their senses such as hearing, touching, seeing in low and high ends of the continuum for each sense. With that experience, participants would be able to gain an overall understanding of the sensory perceptions of an individual with autism. In the beginning of the workshop, there would be a short introduction about the sensory perceptions of a person with autism. After that, participants will be divided into groups and there will be short in-campus sensory walk, and all the observations will be noted. Then, groups would be re-united to share and discuss their insights and experiences, and an autism-friendly campus map will be created. This map will be created based on common places and situations that we encounter in our daily campus lives, with diverse scenarios. There will be a discussion regarding places and situations that might be accessible or inaccessible to a person with autism and which features of these places and situations make them autism-friendly or not, short narratives would be crated.

Agenda:

10.00-10.45: Introduction to sensory walk and how individuals with autism sense the world.

10.45-11.30: Sensory walk and note-taking autism related problems.

11.30-13.00: Scenario writing and visualizing on the map.

Asım Evren Yantaç

Finishing his PhD in Interaction Design, he studied his Post Doc studies in Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, on the topic of employing mixed reality technologies for sensory normalization of individuals with autism. He works as a research faculty at Media and Visual Arts Department and Research Center for Creative Industries at Koç University, since 2013, where he runs the Happern Research Group, that focuses on exploratory research studies on user experience design, interaction and information design and mediated reality technologies.

Zeynep Yıldız

After graduating psychology and Media & Visual Arts majors from Koç University, Yıldız started her postgraduate studies in Research Center for Creative Industries at Koç University. Her research interests are accessibility, universal design and she continues her studies about those topics.

kemal.kuscu_

Kemal Kuşcu

Completed his training in Istanbul University Medical Faculty (M.D), Marmara University Medical School Department of Psychiatry, Marmara University Institute of Health Sciences (MPH), University College London Department of Anthropology (MSc), Tavistock and Portman Clinic (M.A Systemic Therapy). He works as psychiatry instructor at Koç and Marmara Universities and teaches in Mimar Sinan University. He continues his research at SocXLab and Etnograph focusing on social interaction & experience and organizational learning & design.

Doğa Çorlu

Doğa Çorlu is a PhD candidate in interaction design in Design, Technology and Society at Koç University and works as a research and teaching assistant in Happern Research Group. Her research focuses on mediating neurodiverse groups’ experiences in disabling situations. She volunteers for designing services for autistic individuals across digital and public platforms in collaboration with several autism foundations. She holds a BA in Interaction Design from YTU, Türkiye.