Microsoft Teams × Neurodivergence

Microsoft Teams × ND

Redefining virtual meetings with a neurodivergent-inclusive approach in the era of hybrid and remote work.  For many autistic individuals, workplace meetings can be a major source of anxiety and stress. I led a project to transform Microsoft Teams' virtual meeting experience to make it more inclusive for this oft-overlooked workplace demographic.

Key Achievements

Inclusive Product Design: Designed and prototyped a new "chapters" feature that reduced cognitive load and emotional stress for neurodivergent users.

Accessibility-Driven UI: Iterated on Teams' existing visual style to increase contrast to aid neurodivergent users, while upholding Microsoft's visual style and professional presentation.

Demonstrated Skills

Design leadership, providing prioritisation guidance and coordination for the duration of the project.

Holistic user-first thinking, constructing a product experience with implications that extend well beyond the target user.

Collaboration with subject matter experts, through the collaboration of a dedicated UX researcher specialising in accessible design and whitepaper research.

Contributions

User research

Wireframing

UI prototyping

Tools

Figma

Figjam

Adobe Photoshop

Team

Shoji Ushiyama, UX/UI Designer

Mariana Mejía, UX Researcher

Project Background

While autism awareness at the workplace is on the rise, most solutions for video teleconferencing focused on attempting to “correct” behaviour rather than adapting to meet non-neurotypical needs.

These proposed solutions attempt to “fix” autistic behaviour so they can act in more socially acceptable ways.

Autistic behaviours

Solutions...?

Difficulty maintaining eye contact

...as it can feel over-stimulating and stressful.

Censor eyes of participants?

...so the autistic user feels more comfortable making eye contact (or pretending to).

Difficulty understanding social cues

...as neurotypical behaviours such as being vague or sarcastic feel arbitrary and difficult to rationalise.

Auto-detect and label emotions?

...often leveraging AI, so an autistic participant can react more “naturally”, like a neurotypical person.

Difficulty understanding social norms

...as social practises in the workplace are arbitrary and don't come naturally to someone who is neurodivergent.

Enforce turn talking?

...so the autistic participant can be enforced a speaking cadence like a neurotypical person.

While seemingly sensible on the surface, these solutions are far from ideal, for lots of reasons...

They rob agency.

They are engineered to do things on behalf of autistic people. But this means less self-direction over how they engage with others and, ultimately, makes them feel more like they’re being bossed around than being supported.

They are tech-dependent.

What value would these solutions have in an in-person work environment, with no software to mediate? How much time and expense is needed to develop these working solutions?

They further encourage masking.

The message autistic individuals would get from these measures would be that their behaviour needs “fixing”. They may feel the need to mask more of their behaviours, which in turn will hide a great many strengths and opportunities that won't have a chance to flourish.

Were there better, simpler ways the remote workplace could be adapted to meet the needs of autistic employees?

Mariana and I set out to explore if there are ways to come up with new solutions that were not only more effective, but also more now-able, and improved the workplace experience for everyone, neurodivergent employees included.

Project Research

Through a white paper review of this topic, we were able to develop a persona that helped us define the scope of our project.

Persona

Natalie is an autistic woman in her 40s who's starting a new career after years of being disconnected from the tech space.

She thrived in the personal computing boom of the 90s and 00s, but fell off after some time and hasn't been keeping up to date with the latest trends in office tech. Being autistic, she gets anxious in new and unfamiliar social situations, which has come to a head in the new landscape of remote work and video teleconferencing.

She's starting a new career, and on top of the usual stresses that come with a new job, she knows she'll have to adapt and learn quickly which is making her quite anxious.

Mapping her journey through a Microsoft Teams onboarding meeting at her new job, we found three key struggles someone like Natalie would face in this situation.

Struggle 1

“I feel anxious because I don’t know what we're going to be doing or talking about during the meeting ahead of time.”

Without a lot of ground details about the meeting given beforehand, to Natalie the meeting is a massive question mark.

Sure, she knows she’ll be onboarded and briefed, but about what, exactly? What topics will be covered? How long will each topic be touched upon for? This ambiguity leaves a lot of unanswered questions in her head, and she feels unprepared and anxious before the meeting even begins.

Struggle 2

“It's stressful, learning a new app that looks completely foreign to me while I'm in a meeting. The UI looks like it just melts together.”

The very flat visual style of Teams also doesn't set up a lot of clear structure—something that Natalie, an autistic individual, desires a lot from her environment.

In the meeting, she isn't just navigating a complex, unambiguous social environment with new faces, but is now also learning the interface of a completely new app that seems to resist her attempts at comprehending it in her head.

Struggle 3

“Asking for supports during the meeting makes me feel embarrassed, and that I’m a burden.”

Though her workplace does have supports available—a net positive for Natalie, on paper—asking for these supports makes her feel like she's only spotlighting her neurodivergence in front of her colleagues.

Especially on her first day, she wants to give a strong first impression, and that's dissuading her from mentioning it at all.

Concept Development

I translated the three struggles into two major design challenges that we could address as part of our new concept for Microsoft Teams.

Challenge

How might we let Natalie gain more information about the meeting before it starts?

Solution

Through a new feature in Teams where the meeting organiser can divide a meeting up into chapters, sub-sections, or topics ahead of time.

Research yielded a number of stories about how neurodivergent engagement increased when the workplaces simply began providing meeting itineraries ahead of time.

They were better able to internalise a sense of timing and importance of each topic, and worried less about if they were speaking for too long or too little in their turn. I took the ideas discussed in the research and came up with a vision of Microsoft Teams that facilitated these techniques.

Planning the meeting

The meeting organiser would be able to add an itinerary to the meeting details through a simple timeline interface.

Before the meeting

The extended meeting details would be included with the invite, either in the body of the email or as a link to the event in Teams. Someone like Natalie could view this information ahead of time to get a better understanding of the meeting ahead.

During the meeting

During the meeting, Natalie can view the meeting details and itinerary through a collapsible sidebar. The itinerary pane would include a kind of time marker alongside expected duration, giving her a rough idea of how long each topic would be touched upon for.

Challenge

How might we make the UI of Teams easier and friendlier for Natalie to approach and learn?

Solution

By using a visual design system that incorporates skeuomorphic elements to improve contrast & distinction between different UI elements.

While modern and sleek, the flat design of Teams mixes signifiers and affordances, making it tricky to figure out intuitively without guidance even for neurotypical individuals.

I experimented and made a few changes that would help the interface feel easier to navigate, while also providing an undercurrent of warmth and familiarity.

Depth perception

Adding depth would help break up the visual hierarchy of the interface and give some much needed structure back. I chose to raise toolbars on a higher depth to suggest their role as an overarching navigation tool for what's below.

I also recessed elements like text boxes and input fields, inviting interaction by suggesting they were things to be "filled".

Textural Signifiers

Using some very subtle textures, I was able to better signify what different UI elements were meant to do, further helping build a visual hierarchy and adding contrast.

The upholstery-like texture I settled on also gave a feeling of warmth and familiarity, which would help ease the nerves of a first time user like Natalie, while not compromising the professional look of Teams.

Final Concept

With the new features conceptualised, I created an updated user journey map and ran through the new experience Natalie would go through with this iteration of Teams.

Before Natalie even gets an invitation, the meeting organiser first sets up the meeting details in the new Teams interface.

The organiser populates the new meeting with chapters detailing its structure and pace.

When Natalie receives the invitation email, she also finds a copy of the itinerary attached.

Now, she's able to enter the meeting knowing what topics will be discussed, and a better sense of how important each topic will be based on the timetable shown.

In the meeting, she's better able to navigate both the meeting structure and the app itself, and she can concentrate her energy on socialising.

The itinerary pane tells her the topic being discussed, and the timetable helps her adjust how long she focuses on a given topic.

The new UI also feels more welcoming, and she's less likely to fumble when trying to send a file or share her screen.

Natalie leaves the meeting feeling a lot more confident with her new position, and all without having to call attention to her autism in front of her new colleagues and manager.

Above all, the new interface and features improves work life not just for Natalie, but for all her colleagues as well.

Better team play

Natalie feels more confident and content at work, and all without needing to call upon special supports or accommodations. She'll be able to dedicate less of their energy untangling social situations, and more time on connecting with her peers or cultivating her professional skills, which only improves productivity and morale for everyone.

Fewer unnecessary meetings

Since Natalie's manager is pushed to summarise meeting details with each new meeting, it will make it easier for them to catch when a meeting could be done as a simple update email instead. With fewer unnecessary meetings, everyone at Natalie's workplace is better able to make use of their time, getting more work done with fewer interruptions.

Less troubleshooting, more work

Thanks to the clearer interface and flows, there are fewer instances where time is wasted figuring out how their meeting software works. There are fewer distractions stemming from IT issues, and meetings can be extra-focused on the topics being discussed.