Developing Technology to Improve Schedule Planning and Decision Making for Adolescents and Young Adults with Disabilities

Abstract

Adolescents and young adult face challenges in meeting the demands of a busy schedule. Developmentally many adolescents still struggle with the planning and organizational skills needed to make schedules and flexibly respond to scheduling problems in everyday life. Youth with health conditions and other neurodevelopmental disorders are also tasked with managing increased health care needs and have risks for cognitive skills impairments that affect their ability to plan ahead, organize, and rethink decisions in response to daily events. Our project focused on developing an intelligent computerized scheduling system that can provide flexible choice making options for youth within the constraints required to maintain optimal health. We conducted a focus group using expert clinicians who work with teenagers and young adults that have complex health conditions in order to provide feedback to our engineering team about the prototype technology. Results from this focus group provide useful information for those planning to incorporate the technology into an existing platform including suggestions for user experience and information about specific target user groups. Attached here are key summary themes from the focus group as well as the full transcript.