Co-designing interactive applications with adults with intellectual disability

Current and emerging participatory design practices are providing opportunities for people with intellectual disability to have a say in how technology can best support them and their individual needs. In this paper, we present lessons learnt from a co-design exercise aimed at designing a mobile application to support people with intellectual disability when using public transports. We investigate more specifically four elements proposed in the literature in order to deepen the engagement of participants: a digital prototype, a non-finito feature, inclusion of a proxy, and a co-development opportunity. Our observations with 3 users with intellectual disability engaging in an hour-long co-design workshop with a carer confirm the benefits of digital prototypes and non-finito features in this context, contribute a better understanding of the role of proxies, and suggest a longer engagement to potentially take advantage of co-development.