The mistake I didn't realise I was making when designing workshops

2026-06-17T00:00:00+00:00

The checklist I expected

Last week I attended a workshop on neuroinclusivity in learning design.

I expected to come away with a checklist.

Use larger fonts
Send slides in advance
Offer cameras off
Use a dyslexia-friendly typeface

Instead, the biggest takeaway was that there is no checklist.

Hold on - I know you want something tangible, it’s coming - stay with me.

The assumption I hadn’t questioned

The facilitator challenged a belief I hadn’t questioned before: we often talk about neurodiversity as if it describes a group of people.

The workshop argued that neurodiversity is the natural variation in how humans think, focus, process information and communicate.

That reframing changes the problem entirely.

Why this matters for design

When we think in categories, we tend to design for ourselves and then add accommodations afterwards. We build the workshop, the meeting, the presentation or the product, based on our own preferences and then ask, “now how do we make this accessible?”

When we think in variation, we start by accepting that people will experience the same thing differently.

The workshop wasn’t really about fonts or slide templates. It was about design choices.

How much information do you put on a slide?

Do people know why they’re learning something?

Can they contribute in different ways?

Have you considered sensory load, attention span, or processing time?

A familiar product challenge

As a product person, the parallel felt familiar: even if you start with the customer, there’s still a risk of designing for how something is assumed to be experienced, rather than how it actually is - a gap that only closes with context and testing.

Whether you’re designing software, a workshop, a conference talk or a team meeting, the principle feels surprisingly similar:

Start with the expectation that people will experience the same thing differently. Design from there.