Grounded is a proposed airport-travel support service for autistic adults who want to travel independently and make their own decisions about support. Its purpose is to make changing journey information easier to interpret and connect it with practical, optional support. The app is the personal interface I am developing, while the wider idea depends on how personal information relates to airport signs, maps, staff and services.

This page defines the intended product as a whole for the first time. The screens and sketches show what I want to investigate; they do not show a working connection to an airport, a wearable that can identify support needs, or a system tested and approved by autistic travellers.

Why this problem matters to the audience

My project asks: “How might shared airport accessibility better respond to the individual sensory needs of adults on the autism spectrum travelling independently?” The word shared matters. A traveller’s experience is shaped by information and surroundings as well as personal preferences. An app cannot make a crowded terminal quiet or guarantee that staff are available. It can be designed to make information easier to find, show what is known, and let a traveller choose whether to access a next step, a route option or assistance.

My Critical Report combines a literature review with a questionnaire completed by ten self-declared autistic adults aged 18–64. Four themes emerged: independence and control, changing needs, the sensory environment and fragmented journey systems. The sample is small and self-selected, and only one question was explicitly airport-specific for every respondent. I treat these themes as prompts for design and further evaluation, not as a complete account of autistic adults or proof that one interface will work for everyone. The earlier research pages, GDE751: Week 10: What Autistic Adults Need from Air Travel. and GDE751: Week 10: What Makes Airport Support Genuinely Accessible?, develop the evidence on travel needs and accessible support.

This evidence leads to a central design principle: support should increase a traveller’s options without taking control away from them. Different people may want different support, and the same person may want different things at different moments. A clear gate update may be enough at one point. At another, the traveller may want a route, a written prompt to show someone, spoken directions or no additional support. I should not design one response and describe it as universally calming or accessible.

The brand goal

Help an independent traveller keep their bearings when airport information changes, through clear current facts and support they control.

This goal gives Grounded a specific job: connect a change in the journey with an understandable next action while preserving the traveller’s ability to choose how they receive help. It is not a promise to remove uncertainty or prevent distress. It describes the role the product should try to play.

The name Grounded suggests steadiness and orientation. That association needs care: it should not imply that the app can regulate a person or diagnose how they feel. The brand should feel adult, direct, warm and dependable. Its character and colour can add recognition, but operational information must remain the priority. This connects with the provisional voice direction on GDE751: Week 18: Voice & Identity.

What the service is meant to do

The app concept has five connected jobs:

1. Prepare a traveller’s journey. The person could add or select their flight, review key stages and choose how information is presented. A future version might let them save preferences such as text or audio directions, how they want prompts handled, or what wording they find useful when asking for help. Preferences should be optional, editable and usable without disclosing a diagnosis. These are design aims, not features already implemented.
2. Make a journey change legible. If a gate changes, the interface should identify the new information clearly, show the previous gate as previous, and state what the traveller can do next. In my fictional B12-to-A04 scenario, the change is a design event; it is not evidence that every autistic traveller finds gate changes difficult. My communication experiment compares a personal phone interface with shared airport information and a coordinated approach: GDE751: Week 18: Gate-Change Communication Approaches..
3. Offer choices that can be used independently. From an alert, the traveller might open the next practical step, review route information, find available sensory facilities or use a prepared assistance message. They should be able to dismiss a prompt and still see flight information. “Not now,” pause, change and stop are meaningful controls, not decorative details.
4. Support more than one communication mode. The visual interface should provide concise written information, with an optional spoken version for people who prefer to listen or cannot comfortably read the screen in that moment. Spoken support could read a selected instruction or route step, with replay, pause and volume controls. The app should not speak unexpectedly or assume headphones are being worn. A traveller could also choose a short written prompt to show staff. Audio, text and visual cues need to carry the same meaning.
5. Be truthful about information and help. A verified gate update, a proposed route and an assistance request have different statuses. The interface should show when data was last updated and make uncertainty visible. Preparing or sending a request must not look like confirmation that staff have accepted it. If the app cannot verify the gate or map, it should direct the traveller to an authoritative airport display or staff member rather than invent certainty.

How I imagine it working

The early sketches move the concept from a broad system idea towards a sequence a traveller could understand.

Sketch 1 places the app, possible wearable, optional open-ear audio and traveller in one system. It shows that these components would need to exchange information, but that connection is not a current capability. The phone is central because it can present the journey and let the traveller make choices. A wrist-worn device and bone-conduction headphones are exploratory extensions. If explored further, a sensor could measure signals such as movement or heart-rate patterns; those measurements do not establish what someone is feeling or whether they need help. Any prompt based on a sensor would need to be optional, explained and compared with a simpler manual route to the same support.

Sketch 2 uses a fictional gate change to give the idea a journey context. A traveller sees that the departure gate has moved from B12 to A04, then chooses what to do. I use this event to examine a concrete communication problem: which information is current, what action follows, and how does someone reach optional support? The busy setting is a scenario for design exploration, not a finding about how a particular person would react.

Sketch 3 turns the storyboard into a possible app flow: start a journey, receive a change, decide whether to view support, select an option and follow the chosen step. Including “Not now” and a manual way into support reflects the research theme of independence as control. The sketch also exposed a key distinction: flight information and a support prompt are separate events. A gate change should not trigger a claim about the traveller’s emotional state.

Sketch 4 explores what happens after the traveller chooses support. The branches are practical navigation, a possible quieter route and optional breathing audio. Each has different evidence and service requirements. “Show next step” can be prototyped with a fictional journey. A “quieter route” is only responsible if the airport provides reliable, current information about route conditions; an accessible route is not automatically quiet. Breathing audio is a personal option, not therapy or a substitute for environmental changes. Each branch should preserve the ability to pause, switch or stop.

How Grounded relates to existing products

The market research shows that several parts of this proposal already exist. Grounded cannot claim originality simply because it includes airport navigation, gate information or step-by-step instructions.

• Airport apps already connect flight details to journey information. Heathrow’s current app description includes live flight updates, gate information, boarding updates, personalised connection guidance and door-to-gate directions. This is a strong precedent for operational travel information. It also means that a gate-change alert or airport map alone is not a meaningful distinction for Grounded. Heathrow app
• Indoor-navigation products address route finding. GoodMaps describes a platform spanning web, app and venue screens, with maps and indoor navigation. Waymap describes step-by-step indoor and outdoor navigation using phone sensors. These products show that multi-channel or accessible wayfinding is already an active area. A route option in Grounded would need accurate venue data and should complement, rather than replace, airport navigation infrastructure. GoodMaps platform · Waymap overview
• Airport preparation tools break processes into manageable steps. Toronto Pearson offers MagnusCards decks that guide neurodiverse travellers through common processes such as check-in and boarding. This is a useful precedent for making an airport task explicit and reviewable before travel. The proposition I am exploring focuses also on what happens when information changes during the trip, while keeping the person’s choice of support central. Toronto Pearson: MagnusCards

My competitor review also covers tools for venue information, human assistance and personal support: GDE751: Week 18: Competitor and Interface Research. Taken together, this research suggests that Grounded’s possible contribution is how these jobs are coordinated around an individual traveller’s chosen response: current journey facts, an explicit next step, optional sensory or communication support, and honest service status within one journey context. This is a design hypothesis from my initial scan, not proof that no existing product combines these elements or that this approach is more effective.

What Grounded should not promise

The product must not:

• infer that a person is anxious, overwhelmed or calm from their face, heart rate or movement;
• describe a route as quiet, uncrowded or sensory-friendly without current evidence;
• imply that a support request has reached or been accepted by airport staff unless the service confirms it;
• hide standard journey information when someone declines a prompt;
• depend on a wearable, headphones, internet connection or one phone interaction as the only way to access essential information;
• present itself as therapy or as a replacement for airport assistance, signage or staff.

Airport data, indoor mapping, environmental descriptions and staff response would require cooperation from the relevant organisations. A future product would also need clear consent and privacy choices if it collected location or sensor data.

What needs to be tested next

The next prototype should test the communication proposition before the more ambitious connected system. In the B12-to-A04 scenario, I need to find out whether an adult traveller can quickly identify the new gate, understand what changed and locate the next step. I should then check whether optional choices are easy to find without crowding the alert, whether written and spoken directions convey the same instruction, and whether the traveller remains in control after dismissing or changing support.

This review needs autistic adults with varied communication and sensory preferences. The current questionnaire and sketches cannot answer those questions. The concept should be revised from participant feedback and task-based observation rather than judged only by my visual preference.

Brand and product summary

Grounded is an adult, choice-led airport journey support concept. It aims to make changing information understandable and connect it with optional practical support. The app should keep verified facts prominent, explain the next step, make help and audio optional, and show the limits of its data and services. Its distinction is a proposed coordination of these functions around traveller control; existing airport apps and navigation tools already cover important parts of the job.

Provisional direction: build the brand around clear information, individual choice, continuity and honesty. The sketches establish a system to investigate, not a finished or validated product. The next work is to test the core journey flow with the intended audience and confirm which parts can be supported by real airport information and services.