We are creating an app to help individuals living with autism calm down when over stimulated. Over stimulation can cause a stim or the repetition of physical movements, sounds, or words. These actions range from simple pacing to violent yelling. In many cases, this can necessitate a specially designed room, called a sensory room, to help the individual destimulate, but these can be expensive, far away, or otherwise inaccessible. Our app aims to provide a sort of virtual sensory room accessible anywhere, anytime. Other apps provide similar functionality but tend to specialize with one feature, whereas we aim to provide a centralized collection of many features. The existence and success of similar apps, like Calm and the many apps provided by Sensory App House, verifies the potential efficacy of our app.
Each individual is unique in the ways that are most effective in calming them down. Some individuals are hyper-sensitive (are highly sensitive to stimuli) while others are hypo-sensitive (desire physical sensation), and others exhibit qualities of both groups. In order to address these different sensitivities and bring individuals back to sensory regulation, some activities we are considering are: basic drawing functionality, instrumental music/background noises, digital fidget cube, and story reading/illustration. The app will store favorite activities in hopes of customizing the user experience.
The application will be developed in Android due to its simple visual design and range of sensory features including audio, visual, and vibrational components. Additionally, the portability of Android devices allows our app to act as a virtual sensory room at any time in any location.