AutSPACEs: co-creating a citizen science platform

Poster produced for the C*Sci 2023 conference.

AutSPACEs stands for Autism research into Sensory Processing for Accessible Community Environments. Together with a team of neurodiverse co-researchers and open-source developers, we are using participatory research to co-create an open source, citizen science platform.

9/10 autistic people experience sensory processing differences compared to non-autistic people, for instance they may find lights brighter, sounds louder, or busy spaces more overwhelming. This can lead to everyday spaces such as school, hospitals, public transport and offices being sub-optimal, uncomfortable, or totally inaccessible to many autistic people. When it is launched, AutSPACEs will be used to collect together rich, qualitative data on how sensory processing differences impact autistic peopleʼs daily lives, so that we can find solutions to make spaces more accessible.

AutSPACEs uses a combined methodology: participatory research to work in depth with a community of autistic collaborators; citizen science to collect lived experiences at scale, and open source development to ensure our pipeline is transparent, reproducible and can be adapted and reused by others. Within each phase of the research, we have used an iterative work cycle which centers autistic people.

We share an overview of AutSPACEs: our community, methods, a case study, personal accounts from citizen scientists, and next steps.