After completing my eight autistic adult questionnaires, I wanted to find a more visual way of looking at the responses before beginning formal thematic analysis. Instead of immediately deciding what the main themes were, I created a journey map using participants’ own words.

I divided the international air-travel journey into stages:

Planning → Getting to the Airport → Check-in → Security → Waiting → Gate → On the Plane → Arrival / Onward Travel

I then went back through the questionnaire responses and selected verbatim quotes that related to each stage. I placed these alongside photographs of the different airport environments so I could begin seeing where difficulties appeared across the journey.

Why I Did This

Looking at the responses individually had made it difficult to see how the different experiences connected. Mapping them visually helped me see that barriers are not restricted to one moment in the airport. They can begin during planning and continue through navigation, security, waiting, boarding, the flight itself and even transport at the destination.

It also allowed me to keep the participants’ voices at the centre of the research, rather than immediately translating everything into my own terminology.

Some areas visually became much denser than others. Security, for example, contains comments about overwhelm, alarms, changing procedures and the experience feeling invasive. Elsewhere, participants mention navigation, asking for help, crowds and noise, waiting, gate changes, personal space and unfamiliar onward transport.

At this stage, I am treating these as observations rather than final themes. The next step will be to code all of the questionnaire responses properly and see whether these apparent patterns remain when the complete dataset is analysed.

Initial Reflection

Creating this map has helped me understand the airport journey as a connected experience rather than a series of isolated barriers. Something that begins with anxiety or heavy planning before leaving home could potentially be intensified by uncertainty, sensory pressure or unexpected changes later in the journey.

It has also made me question whether designing for only one airport touchpoint would be enough. However, I do not want to decide the design direction from this visual alone. The map is instead a way of beginning to identify where I need to look more closely during my thematic analysis.

Key Takeaway

Visualising participants’ exact words across the journey helped me begin seeing where barriers may cluster, without deciding the themes or design solution in advance.