Software solutions are increasingly used to facilitate independence for people on the autism spectrum. However, design guidelines to make software user interfaces easy to use have not been clearly defined. Here we show, through eye movement analyses, that autistic users interact differently with user interfaces than non-autistic users and make recommendations to improve user interface design. We found that autistic users process icons and images faster than texts. Using both icons and texts was also effective in facilitating comprehension. However, we discovered that non-complementary icons and texts confuse users. Our results illustrate that users on the autism spectrum process user interfaces differently than non-autistic users. We anticipate our findings to improve user interface design for individuals on the autism spectrum.

软件解决方案越来越多地用于促进自闭症患者的独立性。但是，尚未明确定义使软件用户界面易于使用的设计准则。在这里，我们通过眼动分析表明，自闭症用户与用户界面的交互方式与非自闭症用户不同，并提出了改善用户界面设计的建议。我们发现自闭症用户比文字处理速度更快。同时使用图标和文字也可以有效地促进理解。但是，我们发现非互补的图标和文本会使用户感到困惑。我们的结果表明，自闭症谱系中的用户处理界面与非自闭症用户不同。我们预期我们的发现将改善自闭症患者个人的用户界面设计。