Evaluation of the San Diego Museum of Natural History’s SPECTRUM Social Stories Project
Client: San Diego Natural History Museum | Location: San Diego, CA
We explored the effects of the San Diego Natural History Museum’s SPECTRUM Socials Stories project on young adults with an autism spectrum disorder and museum partners who are working to improve accessibility at their museums.
OVERVIEW
With a grant from the Institute of Museums and Library Services and the National Foundation for Autism Research, the San Diego Natural History Museum launched the SPECTRUM Social Stories Project in collaboration with the museums of Balboa Park.
The project brought together museum partners and ten young adults with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to create social stories that help others with ASD visit Balboa Park museums. The project hypothesized that museums must take steps beyond universal design to engage young adults with ASD.
APPROACH
Through observations of the meetups and mixed-methods data collection, we explored whether young adults with ASD feel and know they are contributing to society and that their perspective is valued; build social skills and communication skills with their peers and with museum professionals; and build confidence and self-esteem.
Through interviews, we explored the extent to which museum partners gained awareness and knowledge of adults with ASD, learned to successfully engage them, and increased sensitivity towards their needs.
Our methods were designed and adapted with care. For example, we combined data collection tools suited to each young adult with ASD’s preferences and continuously shared what we were learning with them throughout the project.
CLIENT TAKEAWAYS
The study showed that creating environmentally sensitive spaces can help museums become more welcoming. However, genuine person-to-person interactions among museum staff and young adults with ASD were critical to engagement.
This project surfaced an immense amount of learning about how museums can work to make their spaces more inclusive and surfaced new questions. What might it look like to “take steps” beyond universal design? How might co-creation play a role in helping museums better serve adults with ASD? What does it mean to successfully “engage” young adults with ASD? How might engagement be defined when considering young adults with ASD as a distinct group, but whose individual members have their own distinct needs?
