ADHD Everywhere

I attended Ideas Fest last week, a fantastic outdoor festival bringing together entrepreneurs and investors. There was quite a lot of discussion around supporting entrepreneurs and employees with ADHD and quite a lot of the delegates were openly celebrating their ADHD. As someone who shares most of the symptoms of AHD, but not formally diagnosed, I am curious about the subject. Consequently, I am continuously bombarded on my social media timelines with ADHD related posts. Furthermore, designing for neurodiversity is widely discussed in workplace circles supported by relatively recent published guidelines, standards and books.
 
ADHD is clearly the new hot topic ... but should it be? “We are all on the spectrum” is an often-quoted cliché with a solid base, but it is more like we are all on a range of spectrums varying by individual. We are all different, we are all unique and we should celebrate our individuality. Management consultancies hire graduates of the arts for their divergent thinking and the big tech companies hire neurodiverse people and those on the autism spectrum for their aptitude in attention to detail, logical reasoning, pattern recognition and advanced skills.
 
Why are we continuously pigeonholing our employees and over the years picking out new selective groups to focus on? Remember when gender and culture were the hot topics? Mostly still unresolved but not as trendy in design circles. We need to understand the needs of all our valued employees and design to meet those needs, especially if we want them to return to the office. Office design should cater for all without overly emphasising the needs of specifically identified minorities.
 
Designing for all is not a new concept! Universal design, or inclusive design, was proposed in the mid-1980s and is the mindset of designing the built environment to be usable, equally accessible and simultaneously experienced by the largest number of people regardless of their age, ability or background. The design that accommodates the range of occupants is embedded, invisible and integrated rather than segregated specialist areas.
 
We clearly need to design the workplace to meet the needs of the full range of our employees not the fictitious average person. Designing for the average rather than individuals is lazy design that benefits a minority. Don’t fall into the trap of designing for board members’ needs because they are unlikely to represent the diversity of the workforce, either from a gender, cultural, age personality or neurodiverse perspective. Poor workplace design, that does not incorporate the needs of all occupants, should not be the reason that employees do not want to return to their office. We simply need to provide variation and choice of a range of work settings that satisfy the needs of all occupants, as proposed by my landscaped office (see Beyond the WorkplaceZoo, 2022).