De-centering Inclusivity: Fitting Design for Aut-Ethnography

Neurodiversity perspectives have in recent years made headway in HCI, broadening the role of autistic people. Outside HCI, an essential tool of the neurodiversity movement is the use of first person methods such as autoethnography. This paper explores how interaction design may contribute to ease the burden of conducting Autistic autoethnography (aut-ethnography), and how aut-ethnography may contribute to HCI. Taking an autoethnographic approach in the design of a set of recording devices, we identify three design sensitivities when designing for aut-ethnography: Inertial, sensory, and social fit. We further nuance these in an exploratory trial with other autistic people. We conclude that designing for the context of aut-ethnography requires significant adaptability of the designed artifacts in order to facilitate maintenance of existing rhythms in practice and adhere to fine-grained idiosyncratic preferences and ideals of practicing care and fairness.