Finding a job is a challenge for most, especially when you start out and must learn how to navigate an entirely new and unfamiliar world. For autistic young adults, it can be even harder. In work package 3, the goal was to use extended reality technology and structured career guidance research to build practical tools that make the transition to work more accessible. Focused on VET (Vocational and educational training) the tools we built both present job options one might not typically consider, and aid in landing the job by giving the option to practice for an interview.
Starting with research: understanding the landscape
Before anything else, the project needed to understand what teachers, trainers, employers, and autistic individuals themselves actually experienced when navigating vocational education and employment. To do this, partner organizations across Europe conducted national research activities including focus groups, surveys, and qualitative interviews with teachers, educational rehabilitators, career guidance professionals, and people with lived experience of autism.
On the positive side, VET is practical, concrete, and task-oriented, which fits well with the way many autistic people prefer to learn and work. Yet existing VET leaves a significant gap: our research showed that the technical skills of a trade may transfer relatively well, but “everything around the job” – how to navigate social situations before and during work, or how to handle the sensory environment of a workplace, does not transfer as easily from a classroom. These are things that do not get explicitly taught, because neurotypical learners tend to absorb them without thinking.
The career exploration videos
The first tool developed to accommodate these needs was the VR app “360 – occupations on the spectrum”. In this app, one can see 360 video recordings of 22 different workplaces. Giving a glimpse into an environment where one can both see and hear what typically goes on there, the app can help people think about whether this could be a potential career path for them, given their interests and sensory needs. When we recorded these videos, there were both technical and societal challenges to be solved. For instance, to reduce the risk of motion sickness in VR, we decided to record all videos from fixed positions. To make it understandable for people from different countries, we focused less on country-specific details, such as people speaking a certain language, and more on the general atmosphere, the sound, look and feel of different occupations. In the end, the videos present almost like a “fly on the wall perspective”, which worked very well with the intended idea of exploration.
The VR simulator “Interview Master”
For autistic learners in VET, how to perform well in an interview is something one doesn’t learn, but struggling in that context can close doors before professional skills ever get a chance to be demonstrated. Our research highlighted the difficulty of building something workplace-specific that would remain relevant across different national systems, industries, and employers. A job interview, by contrast, follows a broadly recognizable structure across countries and sectors, making it a far more transferable context for a shared European tool.
The VR app we built is interactive, highly realistic, and reminiscent of a real job interview. It’s a communicative and social challenge, but where repeated, pressure-free practice canoffer real value.For the learner, Interview Master offers a place to practice the communicative and social side of entering work, at their own pace, without judgement, and with the ability to repeat as many times as needed. By experiencing something virtually a few times, one knows what to expect and it isn’t as stressful once you must do it for real.
What these tools add up to
Exposing yourself to new unfamiliar situations and environments is difficult for everyone. With these two tools, we wanted to make that easier, by being able to do so in a safe, repeatable environment where it’s easy to stop and take breaks (you simply take off the headset!). Being able to see possible occupations and being given the option to practice a job interview, the purpose is to make people realize that “This is something I could actually do”.
Crucially, the right tool is not one that tries to make autistic learners more neurotypical, but one that gives them the best possible preparation to enter a world of work on their own terms, with real knowledge of what to expect and real practice in how to respond.
Written by Jakob Håkonsson, VR Experience Designer at Virsabi All tools of work package 3 are available for free on the projects website:
WP3 – XR FOR CAREER GUIDANCE OF AUTISTIC PEOPLE – Green ASC VET / Metautism