Episode 9: Designing for the Mind—Emotion Tracking and Neuroinclusive Data Experience

Maciej Kłodaś (MK): Hello, my name is Maciej. I’m the leader of analytics experience competency group at C&F and this is C&F Talks, a place where experts discuss their ideas and experiences from the perspective of an IT partner. My guest today is Michał Tomczak. Hello, Michał.

Michał Tomczak (MT): Hello, Maciek. Hello, everyone.

MK: Very nice of you to travel here directly from Gdańsk, if I remember correctly.

MT: Yes, from Northern Poland, it was a pleasure to travel here.

MK: Michał, tell us what you do, what is your area of expertise? You’re a guy from the university, right?

MT: Yes, I represent academia, but I try to be linked with business. I am a professor at Gdańsk University of Technology and at Faculty of Management and Economics. I am specialized in human resources management and since 2017, I am researching neurodiversity and work.

At first, I was focused mainly on people with autism and I was researching their situation on the labor market and developed some human resources management practices in order to support the inclusion of this group, starting from the recruitment through the onboarding and job retention.

Introduction to the topic of neurodiversity at work

MK: Okay, so this is the context. We’ve seen that already in our business area. We know that times are changing a bit. Awareness is rising among different clients, enterprises, but also IT partners that the developed solutions need to be tailored to different perks of different user groups. It’s not only whether the user group is a business person or an analyst, for instance, but we are looking at their personal perks, elements of their emotional nature.

Thus, we wanted to research or get to know the area where our tools, our solutions have and where they have a certain impact on how the people are using them, analyze data, which are being visualized on, for instance, an analytical dashboard. So you are the first professor in Poland whose area of expertise is neurodiversity?

MT: I was the first one representing management. Because prior neurodiversity, including autism, ADHD and so on and so on, was a focus of medical sciences and it was completely neglected in terms of management. So to be honest, I was the first in Poland a few years ago to start researching this topic.

MK: Somewhere deep inside, we knew that the solutions that are being presented to a business user have impact, not only regarding the performance of the solution or the speed of analysis. We knew somewhere deep inside that there is another layer of impact, which is more personal, more emotional on the person who is using the solution. So developing stress, for instance, or impacting the proactiveness of the person whose decisions are based on the analysis of the data. So back in the day, we’ve conducted an eye tracking research.

We wanted to test some of the hypotheses regarding the design decisions we made and how the certain layouts of data impact the way that people are analyzing this solution. So we can download the initial report, the link is in the description of this episode. So this was the old research, but we knew that the emotional impact is also very important, but very hard to measure.

We knew that the stress in the decision making process is very important, but we can’t really see how the solution is impacting this area. So can you tell us a bit about neurodiversity, what it is? I know a bit about it because my son has ADHD. But can you tell us about neurodiversity? What is this? How many people are impacted by this?

MT: When neurodiversity issues were introduced into the management research, there was a shift in perceiving this condition because contrary to medical sciences, my favorite definition is the one coined by Judy Singer in the late 90s.

She’s seen as the first who introduced the term neurodiversity. And she says neurodiversity is a variation in human cognition, which is a natural phenomenon. And the key word is natural.

So similarly, someone is tall or short, someone is female or male. Neurodiversity is another form of being diverse within the population. So this is very important because we do not advocate seeing neurodiversity as a deficit. We believe the key to successful inclusion is a strength-based approach.

According to estimates, even 20% of the population could be neurodivergent. So every five people could have some neurodivergent trait. The largest group of neurodiverse people is people with dyslexia, it’s about 10%. It’s the most prevalent condition. For ADHD, it’s about 4%. Autism, some estimations suggest it’s about 2%, more or less. And for the other conditions like dyspraxia, Tourette syndrome, it is about 1%. In total, let’s say it’s more or less 20% of the general population.

MK: What is the situation or the difference between awareness in Poland versus, I don’t know, USA?

MT: In recent years, in Poland, we face a neurodiversity boom. More and more papers, both research papers and in publications in popular media are devoted to neurodiversity.

I’ve been researching the topic for last eight years, so I see this huge difference. Eight years ago, when I was presenting my research at the conference, everybody said, oh wow, it’s very interesting, but nobody cared because I was the only one. Now the topic has gained attention, more and more people are interested.

But still, the first research and the practical projects devoted to inclusion of neurodiversity were started in the USA, Australia and the UK. But from our European perspective, we can be really proud of what is happening now in Poland. Because on the way to raising awareness, I think we are ahead of other European countries, both Eastern and Western countries. We’re doing a good job here.

Neuroinclusion in the business context

MK: But this is social, public awareness. In terms of business, why is it important? You said that we should perceive neurodiversity in terms of strengths or certain perks, not a condition, right? How should we approach a business setup or developing certain tools that aim at certain strengths of divergent people?

MT: To answer that, I would refer to a term that was coined by my great friend from Birkbeck University, London, Nancy Doyle.

Once she told me about the spiky profiles. It’s about human cognition, as we describe in the definition. So each of us, we have some cognitive abilities.

So based on this, we retrieve some information, we retrieve stimulus from the environment, we learn, we work, we perform. The majority of neurotypical people, their cognitive abilities and skills based on that are not so differentiated. So some people are better in doing something, some people are better in doing different things. But when we discuss this issue, in terms of neurodivergent community, their profiles are more spiky.

Because in some spheres, someone can have very significant ability to memorize a lot of data, a lot of information, or being able to remain very focused on a task, much more comparing to neurotypical majority. So it’s some kind of strength. But on the other side, the same person can face some challenges.

For example, the style of how that person communicate is not what the majority expects. So long story short, if we can support that person, for example, during the recruitment process, we can enable that person to go inside the company and to take advantage of these specific skills, which are much above the average. But if we do not support this person.

MK: Then they will be labeled a low performer or there will be challenges.

MT: Yes, the same would happen during the daily job. If we provide some accommodations, for example, neurodiverse-friendly desktops, that person can get the information, analyze some data much faster comparing to a neurotypical employee.

MK: Okay, but this is again about the awareness, right? You need to be aware, you need to be open minded to leverage those skills, which are very high performing in the case of this person. But this is again awareness. You’ve mentioned a study about companies and their maturity in terms of neurodiversity.

Are companies ready to hire and support neurodivergent talent?

MT: With my team, last year, we conducted a large scale study on Polish companies and we assessed the level of maturity within the Polish firms to employ neurodivergent people.

So first, we did interviews with neurodivergent people successfully employed, with their managers, and with HR people were involved in recruitment programs. We identified some determinants of our maturity model. Each determinant was transferred to a survey.

And we did a survey on more than 1000 companies to check if they are mature or not using these determinants. For example, there was a existence of a DEI department, or the presence of neurodivergent people in the company, or demand for the specific skills represented by neurodiverse people.

Based on our survey on 1000 Polish companies, only 15 companies out of 1026, which was more or less 1.5% were assessed as fully mature to employ neurodiverse people. So the conclusion is, in my opinion, the awareness of neurodiversity is rising in Poland, it’s quite high comparing to other countries, but the awareness comparing to being really able to perform recruitment program to organize the daily work in terms that are neurodiversity inclusive, are completely different things. There still is lack of knowledge in Polish companies.

Emotion tracking research as a tool to create a good data experience

MK: In terms of enterprise or business, I would say most often we see challenges while working with a group of neurodivergent people rather than advantages of their certain perks that we can leverage, for instance, in data analysis, right? If we have people that can focus and memorize a lot, they can work with huge amounts of data, and, as you said, only 15 companies out of 1000 are ready to leverage such skills, right?

So coming back to the research that we did some time ago, we wanted to continue it. As I said, we knew deep inside that there is another layer of impact that we can’t really see. We feel that there is such emotional impact, not only the performance of the analysis or dashboard or data solution itself, but there is this layer of stress, and proactiveness in the decision-making process. And we wanted to see and check how our data products impact this group of people on this emotional level.

And we discussed the topic and wanted to also add this group of neurodivergent people to see whether there is a difference of how this group of people analyzes data versus the neurotypical group. And we took 39 people, out of this 39, there were 14 people who declared that are being neurodivergent of different types. We didn’t divide them into specific neurotypes, just treated them as one group.

The research that we conducted is called emotion tracking research. So we use a video sensor, which is essentially a bit similar to an eye tracking sensor, but we are reading emotions while showing people data products. And we use the same dashboards that we did in the first research, because this was just a continuation.

So we wanted to uncover this second layer. And what was very interesting, we were showing those dashboards, we were asking essentially the same questions. We wanted people to find certain data, answer some very simple questions regarding the values or different numbers on those dashboards.

And we wanted to see how they react on a well-designed dashboard that we knew and implemented certain heuristics and best practices. We work with data, we used our skills to develop from our perspective, the best possible UI and UX in terms of data experience. But the second dashboard was a bit worse in terms of UX.

Designing data products for neurodiverse users

We knew that there are certain flaws and usability issues, and we wanted to see how those usability issues impact the people who are analyzing the report. But we didn’t know at that time how neurodivergent people would react. We knew that certain elements might impact, for instance, people with ADHD or autistic spectrum.

You told us about certain elements that we need to take into account while designing for neurodivergent people, for instance to use bold labels instead of regular fonts. What are these elements?

MT: The issue is not so easy because within neurodiversity, we have various groups. Not always something that’s good for an autistic person would be also good for a person with ADHD or dyslexia.

And I am not an expert in UX, I’m just sharing my perspective based on my prior research. In general, for people on the spectrum, it’s very good to, to avoid very flashy colors. So it’s good to use simple colors, also the font should be the same for all the documents.

It should not be like flashy. Also people on the autism spectrum, they prefer very straight communicates. So where there is a button to push, it should be labeled.

Not like ‘click here’ or it’s not a good option because someone can be, you know, not sure what happens if I click here. When the button is labeled, for example, ‘attach files’. It’s straightforward, communicate, it works better.

For people with dyslexia, an example of a good solution would be not only using text and graphs, but also involving some sound. So some audio description, for example.

People with ADHD, they sometimes prefer bullet points. Instead of reading plain text, you know, five pages, they’ll be really happy if they can look at seven bullet points to extract the most important data. To be honest, from my perspective, I think most of these solutions that we discuss are very good for all the population.

Maybe for the neurodivergent people who face some challenges, they may be even more productive, but for everyone, it’s good to have some bullet points and not really go the report. It’s natural.

Insights from our emotion tracking research

MK: When we discussed those elements, I wondered, okay, but these are heuristics. These are best practices which are being used for all users.

So we implemented such practices into our dashboards and we tested this whole group. We knew which users were neurodivergent and which were neurotypical. What we’ve seen is in general, before I jump into the differences between neurotypical and neurodivergent people, is that when we show this better designed report, we generally see better performance, less stress, less irritation.

Essentially, we have a few typical feelings that we can see on the graph when we are researching. This solution enables us to identify those emotions, which are very simple, which is irritation, which is stress, disgust also, and happiness, for instance. We could see that when the people were answering the question and the solution was fairly easy to identify and find the answer, we’ve seen happiness, we’ve seen a little stress, we’ve seen zero disgust.

When we use, on the other hand, the worse report, we’ve seen a lot of disgust, and the users were worrying about how the solution works, where they should be looking for the data. But also there is an emotion called engagement. And this is where the fun starts.

When we’ve compared the results between the neurotypical group and neurodivergent group, on high level, we’ve seen little differences in terms of how they were analyzing the data. But when there was a challenge in finding the answer, neurotypical group usually found this answer despite the fact that it was more difficult. We’ve seen more disgust, maybe more irritation, but at the end, they were able to find this answer.

Whereas the neurodivergent group immediately stopped paying attention on the product, right? So if they’ve seen a barrier, a challenge, they couldn’t find the answer, the data was unclear, or the labels were, I don’t know, complex or unclear, they immediately lost attention.

It’s not like they were even irritated. They just dropped the topic and went forward. Where the neurotypical groups, they could be stressed more, they could be more irritated, but they still could find the solution. So the attention span was still there.

What happens when solutions aren’t tailored to their users

And this is the most interesting part, right?. We didn’t know what to expect after this research, but we’ve seen that if we don’t tailor solutions to certain groups, not only we need to do that in terms of data literacy, the ability to analyze data. But with the neurodivergent groups, we need to really focus on their specific skills, because if we present a solution that has usability issues and poor data experience, they will probably just stop using it.

We’ll have less adoption, we’ll see a lot of stress and negative emotions which will be impacting the decision-making process, or the productivity of the group. They will significantly increase the stress level of those people. And this was the initial hypothesis, and this hidden layer of impact that we knew that is there. If you have this very high stress level, and then this decision-making process is corrupt, you are afraid of taking decisions, you are less proactive in terms of what you do at work. This impacts your performance.

At the end, you might be perceived as a low performer because of that, and it’s not your fault. These are the tools that you’re exposed to, and you can’t really work with them. So this is the awareness that we wanted to raise, that if you know that you are dealing with people who have certain skills, you need to tailor the solution for those people to understand it and take advantage of the data that they need to analyze.

In today’s world, the data democracy is increasing day by day, we are developing tools for people who have a different skill set, they are not analysts, these are business people who need to work with data because we are living in a data-driven world. And if we don’t tailor the solution, well enough for this group, there is a high risk that it will impact their ability to analyze the data and increase their stress level. It could end up in those people leaving the company, for instance, because they feel stressed and burdened by the environment that they are working in.

So tell me, do you see this awareness and its impact in terms of Polish companies? Can you see it’s developing? What are the challenges right now from your perspective, from your research in terms of business?

Leveraging the unique strengths of neurodivergent employees

MT: There are still some challenges, but the general awareness is on the rise. On one side, there is still lower awareness within the employees. Because, if we want to introduce such solutions to allow diverse people to flourish in their roles, the whole company should have some basic knowledge on their specific conditions and skills. And based on that, know what is the reason that someone is behaving like this on the other way? Because the general awareness which is developed by the media is different than the awareness in the workplace.

Knowledge is the biggest challenge, in my opinion, but on the other side, more and more companies are putting some efforts to the introducing recruitments programs or are providing some employee networks and support groups. When I’m talking to companies or speaking at business conferences, I try to argue that neurodiversity, as I said before, is just another kind of diversity.

A few years ago, there was the gender issue as a very popular discussion topic. Then we had age issues, focusing on employees with various ages. Later on, the hot topic was LGBTQ+, resulting in Pride Month and other initiatives like that. So if we think about this, neurodiversity is just another form of diversity.

MK: It’s all about finding value in working with different groups of people with different skill sets, right? Younger people might have more energy and might be more open minded, they tend to take more risk. Whereas the older people who are more experienced, calmer, for instance, right? They can analyze things differently than younger people.

And it’s the same thing with neurodivergent people. They have different skills, they can use their skills to analyze data better, for instance.

MT: The key importance is the person-role fit or person-job fit. Not everyone will be great salesmen or saleswomen. So someone with a specific cognitive profile or skills would be feeling better at the back office, not with the client. It’s natural. And the same is with neurodivergent profiles.

Sometimes I use this metaphor, it’s very personal. I am 45. So when I was at primary school in Poland, in the 80s, I remember one of my friends was left handed. And what did the teacher do in Polish school in the 80s?

MK: Try to make him use his right hand. I remember that.

MT: Yes. So it was something that was perceived as a deficit and they wanted to shift him to being ‘normal’. The same principle applies to neurodiversity. If someone prefers to communicate in a different type, like for example, autistic person would prefer non-direct, written communication, not having to do small talk and so on. As long it does not disturb the communication model in a company, our performance. Who cares? It’s absolutely fine. Yeah. So it’s still only about the shift in mentality.

If we think about it, when there is a huge talent shortage in some sectors, the shift could be easier because in some roles, some business people can think, “OK, I put some effort in redesigning the communication model, neuro-friendly desktops, and maybe my talent shortage would be lower and maybe I can hire and provide great work environment for people who have very good skills in some certain areas.” And if the skills match role, it’s a win-win situation for both the neurodivergent people and the company. Everyone is happy. But it’s not easy, let’s say. It requires some effort.

MK: OK, thank you very much for being with us. This was a very insightful discussion, and I think and I hope that we can do more research together in the future, testing how the data solutions work with neurodivergent groups. By the way, you can find the link to our report in the description of this episode and hopefully, see you again soon to discuss some new reports. Thank you very much.

MT: It was a pleasure for me and huge congrats to C&F for seeing the importance of neurodiversity inclusion. I’m very happy about this. Thank you so much.