Exploring Diminished Reality (DR) Spaces to Augment the Attention of Individuals with Autism

The emerging paradigm of attentive user interfaces (AUI) focuses on solutions for optimizing human-computer interaction to meet users´ needs while also regulating human-human communication by orienting attention or filtering communication. Using a similar approach, we believe that AUIs may benefit attention disorder challenges of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), who are adversely affected by continuously changing surroundings or distracting visual incidents even when no technologies are involved. With this perspective, we carried out eight participative design workshops with interaction designers and ASD domain experts aiming to explore possible AUI solutions for ASD individuals. Interestingly, these studies yielded a novel AUI concept consisting of a mirror-like wall interface filtering out irrelevant visual information from real-time capture of a space. This paper presents some future applications of DR and discusses related human factors. A contribution of this paper is early insights from the set of eight workshops.