The Workaround Is the Spec: Designing With Neurodivergent People

Roughly 15 to 20 percent of people are neurodivergent, and most of them spend their workday in Teams, Zoom, and Slack, tools that were never designed with them. Drawing on my Master’s research at OCAD University, including hundreds of real user posts and co-design sessions with six neurodivergent professionals, this talk shows where these tools break down: sensory overload, notification overload, turn-taking, “always available” status pressure, and buried navigation. You’ll see the features participants designed themselves, from speaking queues to notification batching to per-person volume controls, and leave with practical ways to bring neurodivergent employees into your design process and your workplace norms.