Job Aid Sample

Challenge

The client was a non-profit organization with a focus on advocating for their local autistic community. They wanted to incentivize local businesses to better accommodate the unique needs of their community's autistic customers. Their idea was to create a certification program that would reward local businesses for completing a training course.

The client wanted to include some job aids for local businesses that succeed at getting certified. These job aids could then serve as readily accessible reference materials, so that the most important information from the course could be quickly looked up for reminders in times of urgent need. When it came to information that might see times of urgent need, the two concepts that stood out to me were the identification of autistic customers experiencing a moment of crisis, and the protocol for interacting with autistic customers in general.

When it came to summarizing the identification of an autistic customer in crisis, the reality of autism is that it is a diverse spectrum that can be experienced in a vast multitude of ways, with different individuals even being able to experience symptoms that are the exact opposites of each other. The challenge that I faced as a designer was determining how to distill these complex concepts down to a small number of simple, manageable generalities that would enable quick and efficient reference.

Another challenge that I faced was overcoming the intrinsic bias that exists when it comes to the identification of autistic customers in crisis. The popular stereotype of autism is usually visualized as a very young male child, typically with verbal or intellectual delays. This has contributed to an equity gap in the proper identification of female, older, or "high functioning" autistic individuals who often fall through the cracks and are left to navigate life without access to accommodations. As a designer, I wanted to make sure that my resources would challenge these biases in order to bring help to all autistic customers who might be able to benefit from their use.

Solution

In order to the job aid to be efficient enough to be useful, I needed to condense the diverse experiences of a complex spectrum down to just a few memorable concepts. I succeeded at reducing the symptoms down to five generalities. Additional detail is provided for greater specificity into how these symptoms might appear differently in each unique individual, but the number of overarching concepts for employees to remember or refer to at a glance was successfully reduced to a manageable five.

To help with the quick communication of these ideas, a picture is of course worth a thousand words. When adding pictures to the job aid, I was careful to make sure that it would break through any intrinsic biases that might have otherwise reduced its effectiveness. This was achieved by choosing to use images of boys and girls, with both shown across different ages, when depicting each of the five potential symptoms that employees should look out for.

Result

The result shown above is one of the two job aids that was produced for the client to distribute to local businesses. The one not shown was about how to have more successful service interactions with autistic customers, while the one that is shown above depicts how to identify an autistic customer in crisis. When paired with the eLearning training course that businesses would have already experienced before receiving this job aid, employees should already know how to respond to a crisis that is identified. This job aid, when made visible in the workplace, primarily serves to keep employees mindful and aware of what to look out for so they won't miss any opportunities to put their training to use.