Katrin Suetterlin: Content Design for Neurodiversity – Episode 115

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Katrin Suetterlin is a content architect, a content designer, and an expert on designing for neurodivergent populations.

You hear jokes about ADHD, dyslexia, and similar neurological conditions all the time, but as designers we need to take neurodivergence seriously.

Research shows that at least 20% of the population exhibits one or more types of neurodiversity. If you’re a human-centered design practitioner, you don’t want to overlook this important group of humans.

We talked about:

• her work at wefox, a German insuretech company, where she is a UX content architect
• what neurodiversity is (not just ADHD and dyslexia), how it affects people, and how gender identity can affect a person’s experience of it
• the role accessibility in designing for neurodiversity
• the incidence of neurodiversity – at least one in five people worldwide
• how to address neurodiversity in your content-design practice, and how folks who are not neurodivergent can also benefit from these practices
• how physical architectural practices and other professions address neurodivergence

Katrin’s bio

Katrin Suetterlin is a UX writer and content designer with a Master’s degree in German and English literature, a background in language teaching and SEO, PR and online marketing. She is a soulful and witty public speaker, advocating for inclusion, ethical design and visibility of neurodiversity. Appearing in her community’s podcasts, conferences and meetups, her goal is to bring a different perspective to the discourse and learn from others. Together with two co-founders, she is also holding a monthly meetup for German UX writing. Along with Andrew Astleford, Katrin is executing a different kind of pair-writing in a question and answer format to shed light on a myriad of facets the profession of human-centred UX writing offers.

Connect with Katrin online

• LinkedIn
• Medium
• Pair writing across the pond (connect with Katrin to get access)

Links and resources mentioned in the interview

• Katrin’s survey
• Neurodiversity is a strength in UX Design by Saskia Mick
• Neurodiversity and User Experience with Kalina Tyrkiel
• Designing for Neurodiversity by Rain Breaw, Interaction Designer, Google
• Masking & Sensory Issues by Neurodivergent Rebel
• Human Neurodiversity Should Be Celebrated, Not Treated as a Disorder | Op-Ed | NowThis
• Neurodivergent designers on Twitter
• How to Embrace Neurodiversity in your Employer Brand
• Enabling Spaces featuring a simulation produced by the National Autistic Society UK
• Office Space Design for Neurodiversity

Video

Here’s the video version of our conversation:

Podcast intro transcript

This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 115. It’s common to joke about ADHD, dyslexia, and similar neurological conditions. But as content designers – and as design professionals in general – we need to think seriously about them. Research shows that at least 20% of the population exhibits one or more of these types of neurodivergence. To learn more, listen in on this conversation with Katrin Suetterlin, a content architect and an expert on designing for neurodivergent populations.

Interview transcript

Larry:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 115 of the Content Strategy Insights Podcast. I am really happy today to have with us, my friend, Katrin Suetterlin from Germany. She’s a senior content architect at wefox, which is an insurance technology company in Germany. Welcome, Katrin. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you do there at wefox.

Katrin:
Hello. I’m basically doing what I’ve been doing all my life, which is writing and making things better for others, because I’m a user myself and I experience the world a little bit differently and I want to make it better and more inclusive for everyone. Wefox does insuretech, which means we try to digitalize all the steps of insurance, which is something that is a lot about trust. So you have to choose your words wisely and also about structuring and building blocks of information, that you don’t overwhelm people. So that’s my main goal that I want to achieve there as a UX content architect. And that’s also why I call myself that, because I got the inspiration from you, Larry, when we talked back in the day. I think it’s a great concept and I saw your talks a lot, and I think it’s also with the house metaphor. We are building a house where people can experience things.
That might be a user, that might be a patient, that might be a candidate for a job hiring process, still it’s a user experience world where we design the digital interactions. I’ve been a writer 15 years and ongoing, and I’ve been in UX over five years because the digital aspect of writing was always my main goal. I achieved that over some twists and turns in my CV. I was a teacher for German, and I also love to empower people and be an advocate for certain topics.

Larry:
Well, and the way you just said that, you identify as a writer, but you also said a lot of design stuff in there. So do you equally identify as a designer and a writer at this point?

Katrin:
Yes. Absolutely. That’s it. I think if you are looking at spaces and you are only looking at the words, you’re doing something wrong, no offense. But if you only have an Excel sheet and you don’t know whether your words will be going up or down or bottom or left in the UI, or which colors are used, will this be fine for a colorblind person? Then I have to put in my veto and say, no, please. Don’t do that, because I’m still also on the design team. My experience might not supersede the others, but maybe I know a little bit of information that is helpful to make this accessible for everyone. And so we don’t have much bad user feedback.

Larry:
I know one of the populations that you’re really concerned with, and that’s what I want to talk about today is folks with neurodivergent capabilities. So tell folks, I know that’s a new term to a lot of people. I think there are other terms like dyslexia and things like that, that people are more familiar with, but could you tell us what neurodivergence is? How neurodivergent people experience the web?

Katrin:
Yeah. I would love to, Larry, and I love that you said capabilities, because we are not speaking about impairments per se, because it’s not just a difference in ways of experiencing life, you just have a different brain. You are either born with it or you have acquired neurodiversity, which can also happen during an accident and you have brain trauma and your brain will be forever altered, but also traumatic experiences like a two-year long migration or tsunami or fleeing another country are ingrained in your brain and change the wires in your brain. But mostly, neurodiversity came into of this realm by referring to dyscalculia, dyslexia, dyspraxia, which is verbal skills and motor skills. Then there’s also ADHD, people in the US listening to this will be quite familiar with everything with ADD and ADHD, but in Germany or in Europe and in general, it’s not as vast of a knowledge. So people will still have the little-boy bias about ADHD, which is just not true.

Katrin:
Whenever I will refer to neurodivergent individuals in this talk, I will want to say that I always mean all genders, but gender is still a binary construct in many places in the world. So, for example, and just getting back to that, ADHD is presenting much differently in female socialized individuals than it does in male individuals, because society raised you, mostly in our age, it’s a boy or girl. And the third gender has been officially gotten into law in Germany and in other places in the world. But still, you are put into certain kind of clothes or you are just addressed differently. And that just means that people that are female identified will have a much harder time living with ADHD or autism, because it is still labeled for men and boys. So you don’t get treatment, you maybe even don’t get diagnoses and then you are just maybe lost like a paper bag in the wind.
And the others, I just want to quickly wrap it up, is that you also have the parts of depression or Tourette syndrome. And then you go into the parts where there is a high overlap with highly sensitive people, which is a term used mostly for people that have sensory issues or they are, a little bit of sensitive to lighting or to noises, like you are in a canteen and you can only hear the metal of the forks clipping and clapping.

Katrin:
I have that problem, and that is an auditory sensory issue, where you are just not capable of being someone else than you have been born with that brain. It can be the same with pain. It can be the feeling of clothes against your skin. It can be temperature. I’m always freezing. I did not know that this was part of my own neurodivergency until very recently, because I’m digging through the research and people like doctors or professionals hardly know about this overlap with the highly sensitive stigma or whatever.

Katrin:
So just to say, all of this and once, it is something that makes you, just in all of your senses and the way your brain works different from the neurotypical people, that don’t experience that. And if you grow up as a child and you’re not diagnosed, you can imagine, Larry, that first, you think everyone is the same as you. And once you realize it’s not the case, this is already hard for you, but even harder is once the others realize that you are different and the bullying starts, or the calling name starts for autistic people, it’s so hard to not get overwhelmed. So in general, this is a neurodivergence life where you have to either first acknowledge it yourself or others are putting the label on you, or they are even going after you for being different, because it shows and you just can’t help it until you can help it by masking and trying to be like all of the others. This is very painful as well.

Larry:
That whole situation you just described, there’s so much in there, like the fact that it’s a span, that it’s not like a binary.

Katrin:
It’s a spectrum. Absolutely.

Larry:
Yeah. It’s a spectrum. Yeah. But also the fact that it’s not immediately obvious to people, like a blind person with a cane or a deaf person who’s using sign language or something like that. You mentioned a lot of things in there. There’s so much that’s physical, but a lot of that manifests in the design of these digital experiences that we’re all crafting.

Katrin:
Yes.

Larry:
Let’s focus in on that. Tell me, are there analogies, for example, to that highly sensitive person? I’m picturing a wall of text that might bother somebody, like it bothers me. Can you talk a little bit about that, focusing through that lens of digital experience?

Katrin:
Absolutely. I attend most of the Texthelp seminars. They are from the UK, I think. They do a lot about accessibility and UX and writing of content to really speak to all of the users you might be addressing, or the audience that you chose as your target group, so to speak. The thing is that every little thing in there that I mentioned, ADHD and also dyslexia, has a spectrum of its own. We know that about Asperger’s and I will correct this because Asperger is a rather controversial person. And it’s now called autism and really not the former name anymore. I learned that from a Netflix series called Atypical, which also is a great resource for getting to know the world of a autistic male-identifying teenager, which is amazing. It’s really lovely and funny and has great presentation of that. I spoke to other, or to autistic people that can really see themselves, but many cannot see themselves in representations like this.

Katrin:
And this will always be you the same way. You cannot be represented by all of the UX professionals, because we are so many, and we are so different. So when dyslexia, for example, is addressed, they say this wall of text that you just mentioned, but dyslexia comes in many shapes and sizes, just like color blindness, like you mentioned, the permanent disability or impairment of vision. It’s similar, you just have to look out for your typography. You have to use sans serif. You have to check the width between the letters and you might not go under 12 pixel, if possible, for your typeface. The size is very important as well. But I found out the hard way about that when, I know that, and I published an article about neurodiversity, about my research, on Medium, and it got picked up and I was happy that it was amplified and more people got to know about it, but the publication that picked it up had serif typeface.

Katrin:
So someone wrote a comment, “This is not accessible at all. This is not a great example of an accessible article for neurodivergent people.” And I was so taken aback because they’re right. And I didn’t check. And I was like, Okay, that’s another learning. So basically, you cannot always do everything right, but you can aim to look for the right way to design experiences. That’s why my research was about, which I stated in this article. And since then, of course, the publication doesn’t change their typeface, but you can still read it if I take it back and I make it my own again, then I’m the author and can make the typeface exactly that is readable and enjoyable for everyone. But of course, as every platform has, there are restrictions and there are constraints that I cannot change. So I have to search for something that is truly accessible, and this is a journey. We are all on a path. We never will reach the goal in our lifetime, I suppose. But that’s something I learned about that in my research for neurodiversity and UX design or UX content, especially with words.

Larry:
That’s really interesting, the typography, that’s something that’s often out of control for the individual content designer, but depending on your setup, you might be working with the design folks who are making those decisions. But what can you do, say you’re in a position like that publication you mentioned, the way they didn’t change the font, even after you identified that. How can you as a content designer craft words, what can you do with that constraint to still make it as accessible as possible to someone with dyslexia or similar?

Katrin:
So the research I’m referring to is a Typeform survey, very short, eight questions, and four are optional. So it’ll only makes up for four questions. And I would love you to put the link in the show notes [here’s the link] so that people still can answer that because it’s an ongoing research and it’s not used for anything like a census or taking note for a corporation or something. It’s just for me to learn about me and getting there to make a better decision every day, every time, like you mentioned, with every stakeholder. So in this research just quickly, 60% were self identifying with neurodiversity. 45% were advocates of neurodiversity. So you can have multiple answers. And 33% work with neurodiverse people. So it’s also something that is for the realm of the workplace and the HR situation and how you make people more at ease with whatever what’s bothering them.

Katrin:
So this is the first one. And when you are asking me, then I just think from my research, it shows, avoid the walls of text, break up the content into digestible pieces, which also means making choices for visuals that are the so-called separators of those content blocks. Try to make it readable, like the typeface I just mentioned and try to make it also contrast-wise, enough of a contrast so everyone can access it. This is the one on one of accessibility, of course, and in the US, you have laws for that. In Germany, it just came out for digital spaces, but it still has a long way to go. I was so impressed with another, the other day I saw webpage, where you could adjust, for people with photosensitive issues, you could take out all the videos or the autoplay, which is amazing.

Katrin:
Then they had an ADHD version where you could click on it and it was less distracting. And I was like, this is so easy. And this is so fun. And people are really getting into this. It was a German webpage for a football club where I live. And I was impressed because someone apparently told them it would be nice to make it accessible because your stadium that you are building new right now is also accessible. There’s a place for the wheelchair. People there, maybe, like you said, with a cane, walking impairments, but also vision impairments. Maybe you get a better seat that you can watch the game more perfectly as you wish.

Katrin:
So basically, in general, like you said, design is about making it as accessible, but also enjoyable for those people. Because for example, if you are in hyperfocus, this is an ADHD example, then you might get distracted by the details. And this web page just takes it away with one click. You might miss out on something, but then again, you’re not distracted anymore. And I hope that they are doing user tests, which you will also, the question is also leading there, where you ask the audience, then you ask a diverse panel of the audience.

Katrin:
And if you are, for example, again, someone with autism, maybe that everything blends together as with the dyslexia, this could be the same. There can be overlaps between the neurodivergencies. Then just try to make it not as big of a wall of text and maybe make it more sustainable and digestible, and also reduce your bounce rates. For example, with ADHD, if they have another impulse and they see something else on your page, they might abandon the cart and there goes your conversion. And then you have the drop-off rate in the thousands and you never know why, but maybe you have an influencer in a YouTube clip where you provided on the same page and they just left your website and never came back because they forgot. And this is the magic of finding out what neurodivergent people are seeking for, with their capabilities. As you mentioned, it’s not a superpower. It’s just another way of wiring in your brain. And if we designed for that, that would be amazing.

Larry:
A couple things you just said, one thing I’m really curious about now is the prevalence of neurodivergence. Do you have a feel for what percentage of the population would fit in that category or?

Katrin:
Yeah, I did research for you, just fresh research right from the get-go, because of course, numbers change all the time, but globally, you can say that there is one in five people that a diagnosed-

Larry:
Wow.

Katrin:
… And hear that, in that sentence, a diagnosed neurodivergent person. Which means how much more would there be, like from the ’80s when I was born from further before that, when people were just too occupied with a world war going on and you didn’t test for that, and people were just killing themselves because trigger warning, suicidal thoughts. It’s just something that makes you so desperate if it’s not treated, because if you’re an outcast, it could easily lead to not being part of the cultural life anymore, the social life, you never know. And so basically, it’s 20% and those are only the 20% that know of that.

Katrin:
And as I mentioned with the example with the genders, if you take the binary gender construct, and women are largely undiagnosed, and now it’s getting out in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 70s, they just, because of course, war trauma also causes that if you stick to Germany or to Europe, but then again, it’s really not overdiagnosed because maybe this is the point in time where I can tell you and the listeners, it’s a cliche and it’s not true that it’s overdiagnosed. It’s just mislabeled as a way of saying, “Oh, I’m a little bit of ADHD.” Or “I’m autistic because I need to take this route to the mailbox,” or something, or that I need to turn the key three times. And then they are making fun of the autistic traits that they might have. It’s not an autistic trait that you have, it’s an artistic like or presenting way of doing things.

Katrin:
For example, liking a certain fork to eat your meal or something, that can be, if you’re an autistic person. But if you’re not, then it’s just an autistic presenting trait, for example. It’s not maybe the completely perfect psychological expression that I’m using because I’m just making up as I go. But in general, to answer your question, it’s like 20%. And I also want to mention that those 20% are not the slackers and the losers and the finishing-last kind of people in any kind of community. They are not the greatest of them all either, because most of the time, you mentioned, famous people like Simone Biles, for example, she recently dropped out of the Olympics due to her mental health and former to that, or prior to that, she said that she has ADHD. They achieve a lot because they can really focus in on training, but it’s not that alone, because they’re still so much more than their diagnoses or their traits for ADHD.

Katrin:
So basically, I think the number is much larger. And what I was aiming at is that I once got told, “Oh, our audience cannot be neurodiverse because they are high achieving professionals that have money and they are CEOs.” And I was like, Have you ever looked at Elon Musk? Can you do 180 hours a week without being some kind of differently wired? Not that everyone is a genius that has a neurodivergency, but it is possible to be anything and anyone, and it’s just the way you’re brought up or how you have been helped or not helped and supported that leads you to a way of living your best life or something like that.

Larry:
Got it. Hey, couple things you said, I want to stitch it together, a couple things you said, because you’ve mentioned that-

Katrin:
Yes, please.

Larry:
… this isn’t necessarily an innate, inborn thing, it can be trauma induced. There’s a lot of people on the planet in the middle of this pandemic who are currently experiencing trauma [note: we recorded this episode before the Russian invasion of Ukraine]. So between that, so the fact that it can be trauma-induced and that it probably, from what you’ve said, I bet it’s way more than 20%, it’s so easy to go undiagnosed or unidentified. That just seems to magnify the importance of it. And I guess what would be the top things that a designer of any kind, but in particular, a content designer, can do to just, I don’t usually do this in this podcast, but I feel like I want to. What’s one take-home that people can do tomorrow to make their content-design practice better to address this probably really ubiquitous issue?

Katrin:
That’s a good one, because getting back to what you were referring to in the beginning, the temporary, situational, and permanent impairments [we actually discussed this before I hit “record,” so, don’t worry, you didn’t miss this earlier], this is an invisible capability or impairment, however you frame it and however your life has gone. What you can really take is home that you maybe try to take a step back. When I heard the talk of Steven Wakabayashi about design practice and how we could all take a step back and simplify our designs. In order to make it, in his case, Steven talked about the accessibility for diverse crowds and for BIPOC people and for LGBTQIA+ people. So it was more about that, because that’s what QTBIPOC does, where he is in his organization. I was so stunned because I think we could all take a step back from our design practice because we sometimes get lost in the nice … things, such as audio in the background or autoplay, or for example, not providing closed captions.

Katrin:
What’s the deal with that? Yeah. It helps everyone. It helps also the person that has gone through trauma, according to what you said with the pandemic, because they are so depressed, they couldn’t go outside. It doesn’t mean that they are distracted or annoyed by your video, but maybe you just cut it out. Is it necessary? Where do you put it? Has the page a scroll depth of forever, infinity or something, or has it just one viewpoint where you can see everything at one glance. And then for us wordsmiths, do you really have to use all that words?

Katrin:
I really want to make a statement about a podcast everyone should listen to after yours, which is The Minimalists Podcast, which I follow. And the episode is with Amanda Montell and she is the author of Cultish. It’s a book about cults, as the name says, and I was stunned as well because every UX content person needs to listen to that, since jargon, idioms, phrases that is hard to understand are excluding people. And I want to quote directly from my research when I asked about the biggest pain points of neurodivergent people in general, not only UX, but the workplace as well. This person said, quote, unquote, “Not understanding some nuances of language, especially implications that aren’t metaphors or idioms.” Quote unquote. So they are left out.

Larry:
That’s a pretty deep level of rhetorical composition attention that you should bring.

Katrin:
The podcast episode just talks about how exclusive language can be. And this is about cults and their jargon and their roles and their titles and their names and everything, which is just, it blows your mind. It’s an amazing episode. And jargon is something that I want to abolish better sooner than later. Like yesterday. How about that?

Larry:
Well, I will definitely link to that cult talk and Steven Wakabayashi’s talk. Hey, one thing you just mentioned, it occurred to me that there’s so many design practices that have benefits beyond the people they are designed to address like curb cuts in sidewalks help delivery people, as well as people in wheelchairs and closed captioning can help you if you don’t have the earbuds and you’re in a loud coffee shop.

Katrin:
Absolutely. Yes.

Larry:
Is there something analogous in accounting for neurodivergence in your design? Does everybody benefit from paying attention to these considerations, do you think?

Katrin:
Absolutely. If you test it out in journey maps and you see the difference, if you even do, because again, people are undiagnosed, walking around with neurodivergencies, you don’t know, and they don’t know, and they just think, “That’s odd. What kind of button is that?” And then they just give you feedback on that and it goes directly into your feedback. So I love that you mentioned closed captions because it’s amazing for people with any kind of visual impairment, but also with dyslexia and anything that has to do with seeing numbers and letters. If you have a problem with that, it’s amazing that you can follow the audio.

Katrin:
And if it’s the other way around, you can follow the text or you can follow both. I just had a little conversation with a person that identifies as an autistic ADHD person, I guess. They said they love to have an audio book and have the real book in their hands while they’re listening to that audio book, because that’s the way they just get to suck everything in. And it was, funnily enough, the book, NeuroTribes that was referred to, which is dealing with the life of autistic people, of people with autism, however they want to label themselves. And getting back to your question, sorry, Larry, just one quick thing. If you are taking care of your parent or your kids, and you have to just, the ability to listen and maybe they are screaming in the back, how amazing is it that you have closed captions or transcript for your talk or you have prerecorded it? So there are no audio interferences, which can be very hard to listen and to focus on for all of us, because we exhibit Zoom’s fatigue all over the place.

Katrin:
Everyone who has to work remotely has the upside and the downside. So if you have this clicking and crackling and they’re breaking up, the best talk is ruined by that maybe, but you can still have that recorded at a time where your wifi is better. And so everyone can benefit from that more. And maybe you benefit from it as well, because you’re not as nervous as when you are giving talks or whatever, because of the excitement. So I think this is also, if you’re hungry, if you’re in a hurry, if you have to go somewhere, it always helps that you have it stripped down to the most important part, no jargon. Make your sentences count, make them short, but not too short, come across with anything that you want to say, but maybe also stay away from language that is not standard and is not used by everyone. And you will see that in your user testing, if you do some.

Larry:
Cool. Hey, Katrin, I can’t believe it. We’re already coming up on time. Is there anything else, anything? I know, but this is an ongoing conversation. I’m sure we’ll continue it, but is there anything last that you want to make sure we share right now with the folks?

Katrin:
Yes. I think from the 80% UX professionals that answered my survey and the 22 who are not, they might be advocates or living with a person or relative that is neurodivergent or they work with one in their cubicle or something. I had a little index and asking them how much they feel like they are included in the design world, especially with words, content design, UX writing, but also UX design in general. And guess what? The number was more close to 2 than it was to 5 out of 10. It was not 2 out of 5, it was 2 out of 10, which made my heart break because I think of course, the NPS score and emojis and this and that and numbers, it’s all subjective, but they felt inclusion only to 2 from 10. That’s so bad.

Katrin:
And I want to share something that we had a spark about in our preparation for this podcast. Architecture and other design practices, for example, interior design and everything related, for example, to a museum’s experience or something, they are my much more progressed in that field. I want to share the link in the show notes for you to include about Enabling Spaces, which is a neurodiversity-friendly living spaces and workplaces website, where you can also have simulation by the National Autistic Society from UK, What’s it like to be an autistic person? And there are many great resources out there speaking about how, interior design, for example, lay down a rug and it’s not as loud anymore. Put some wall board up, and it’s not as loud anymore, or maybe also lighting and how it affects people in the workplace. Do you want fluorescent lighting that gives people with sensory issues, migraines? I don’t think so.

Katrin:
So people are really front and center with that and doing really great. Even in my school, they changed the tiles. The old school tiles’ made of stone, out for felt-like, a fabric that they changed and it swallowed all the sound. And it was much easier for everyone not to get sick from that, because noise makes you sick of course. And teachers got sick a lot due to the stress so that you don’t need the added noise. And this is what I have at heart, that we look to other design practitioners and to other people that can inspire us. And it’s out there every day and any day, how people struggle and if that struggle is necessary. So I think that’s the thing I want to share, that people have to look out for.

Larry:
That’s fantastic. And this always happens, too, in these conversations. Now, I want to have a whole talk about that. So let’s have that in our next conversation, how to apply what other are people doing well. Hey, one very last thing, Katrin, what’s the best way for people to stay in touch, to connect online or…

Katrin:
Yes. So I would love to see anyone who has still open questions or anything reach out to me on LinkedIn. The mailbox is not always open of course, because we have to take time off as well for ourselves to be energized again. You can also, if you like, find me on Medium, it’s my name, Katrin and Suetterlin without any things between, and then medium.com. This is where I write what I plan to maybe release in this year also a Substack. And whenever Larry and I get to meet up in person, I will pick his brain. And afterwards, I will start my own podcast maybe, but you have to look out for that because it’s nonexistent before. That’s it, basically. I would love to talk to you all and find out more about that. And if you take the survey, that would be lovely.

Larry:
I’ll link to all that in the show notes as well.

Katrin:
Thank you.

Larry:
Well, thanks so much, Katrin. It’s always fun to talk to you.

Katrin:
Thank you.