Kinda tangential, but after living alone for a few years I've updated my selection criteria for furniture to prioritize cleaning difficulty and comfort over visual style. Given its nature, industrial-style furniture is usually easier to clean and it's made from tough material capable of handling a wider range of cleaning chemicals.

I wonder what the outcome would be for a person with autism. I remember watching a video of a psychologist explaining that normal people are better at abstracting visual concepts, and used a drawing of a house as an example. Most people would likely draw the traditional pentagon house with chimney, but a person with autism would need to draw a specific house.

Don't we improve on this by leveraging tools? e.g. paper and pen, computers, etc. I don't have to imagine a large number of visualizations all at once, I can just draw a mockup and reference it when needed. That lets you group everything up into a conceptual black box, instead of tracking it all in your head.

In the case of treating phobias, can't we leverage photos and video? From an uneducated perspective, it would seem like a reasonable middle ground.