Welcome to the website of ‘Design your Life’

Design Your Life is a research project (2020 – 2024) funded by NWO and SIA-RAAK, involving the University of Twente (NWO lead) as well as HAN University of Applied Science (SIA-RAAK lead).

Two phd students, a senior researcher and several bachelor and master graduation students collaborated in researching and creating a hands-on creative toolkit that enables young autistic adults to design, create and iteratively adapt their own supportive (technological) environment, promoting independence and autonomy in everyday life. We work from a neurodiversity perspective. This means that we believe autism is not a disorder, but a diversity, in terms of bodily comportment and interaction with the world (perception, action, information processing). What is needed is not fixing the ‘disorder’, but finding suitable interfaces with the world. And adapting your own everyday environment can help with that. Furthermore, designing your own living environment is rewarding, fun and empowering.

On this website you can find the open source materials of the toolkit that can be downloaded for personal use. This part is still in development.

We also built a community website, NDHacks.nl, where you can upload your own designs and prototypes to inspire and share with other neurodivergent makers. On this website you also find a link to a Discord community where you can chat and connect with other neurodivergent makers.

A graphic representation of the Design Your Life process. Six hexagons are placed in a circle, one additional hexagon is placed in the middle. The outer hexagons describe the design process: my situation, my focus, my ideas, my thing, my test and my lesson. The six hexagons in the circle are connected with arrows, emphasising the cyclic nature of the design process. The hexagon in the middle reads my ways & my world. All six outer hexagons contribute to the understanding of the ways and the world of the YAA. — A visual representation of the Design Your Life method.