Using Crowdsourcing to Foster Creativity in Children with Autism during Idea Generation

Previous work suggests involving autistic children in participatory design (PD) benefits them. However, express thoughts are two of the most acknowledged difficulties autistic children face during the PD process, particularly during the stage of idea generation. These are linked to the disorder-specific impairments in social interaction and rigidity in thought and behaviour. Recent work recommended technology as a tool to support children during idea generation. Building up on these efforts, this paper proposes using crowdsourcing with a team of selected online workers, as a way to generate child-specific hints to help autistic children unlock their creativity. Moreover, machine learning techniques and the majority decision approach are suggested to remove noise, redundancy, and select the child-specific hints.