'Put yourself in the picture'

Abstract

Individuals with intellectual disability are all too often overlooked in the planning of their own support. Responding to this concern, and in line with person-centred planning, this paper outlines the collaborative development of a mobile app to support the communication, interests and goals of young adults who attend a disability support organisation. Existing technologies focus predominantly on enhancing academic abilities, such as literacy or numeracy, disregarding the potential to support personal interests and individual goals. Through a process of Reflective Agile Iterative Design (RAID), a mobile app was developed which enabled young adults with intellectual disability to produce an image of themselves achieving a certain goal. Although the app was designed for individual use in formal goal-setting meetings, participants used the app for social activities, such as taking 'group selfies', emailing their images to proxies and 'layering' selfies. The app supported the individuals beyond the planning process, contributing more broadly to enhancing overall communication, self-expression, and socialisation.