COBO: A Card-Based Toolkit for Co-Designing Smart Outdoor Experiences with People with Intellectual Disability

This paper presents a co-design toolkit that aims to involve people with Intellectual Disability (ID) in the ideation of smart outdoor experiences. We conducted a series of workshops with young adults with ID and special-education professionals of a social-care center, to identify the physical and digital experience that could favour reflection and engagement of the addressed users, and empower them in solving daily-life challenges. Multiple refinements of iterative prototypes led to the design of an interactive toolkit, COBO, that integrates inspirational cards, interactive smart objects and multimedia contents to guide users during the conception of novel ideas. This paper illustrates the main insights of the conducted workshops and the design of COBO. It also reports on a preliminary evaluation we conducted to validate some design choices for the integration of physical and digital components within COBO.