Thinking outside the box: navigating product design and neurodivergence
Four members of Zalando’s product design community share how to flourish in product design as, or alongside, someone on the neurodivergent spectrum.
Great minds don’t all think alike, and that’s one of our greatest strengths! Whether we see the world differently due to our upbringing or cultural factors, or have unique abilities and challenges, every kind of difference within a community brings the gift of perspective. The rich variety of cognitive styles, talents, and outside-the-box thinking that neurodivergent individuals bring to the table are being recognised as game changers in the workplace, contributing to a boost in productivity, innovation, and employee engagement.
With increased awareness comes increased acceptance — of everyone in our team. Umbrella terms like ‘neurodivergent’ — encompassing neurotypes like Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, Tourette’s syndrome, Bipolar disorder, or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) — help to cultivate understanding. However, whatever traits we present, acceptance ultimately comes down to accommodating and celebrating each other’s uniqueness.
“Human beings are very complex,” says Senior Product Designer Idowu Adesina. “The spectrum varies greatly, and I feel labels can sometimes be too constricting. The most important thing is making an effort to understand how everyone thinks and reacts to things.”
To support others on their professional self-development journey, Idowu and three other members of our product design community share their experience of navigating neurodivergence and product design. Read on for their tips to help you and your colleagues to flourish.
Lean into your strengths
Neurodiversity is a seed of innovation in product design teams. Different ways of thinking and relating encourage new approaches and strategies. Leaning into our unique strengths, skills, or interests benefits everyone. At Zalando, people are often matched to projects based on these parameters and their learning goals, optimising their impact and fuelling personal and collective development.
Senior Principal Product Designer Israel Martin says neurodivergent individuals “inject a certain level of positive disruption that allows space for creativity, curiosity, intuition, and divergent thinking.” As a bar raiser for his craft, he found he makes the most impact by leaning into his strengths. “On a project level, I have noticed that I thrive in and feel more motivated by less linear initiatives that interconnect multiple dimensions. It can be shaping and making a future vision strategy tangible or reconfiguring and interconnecting big chunks of the customer experience. Any perceived pressure to fit into norms or conventions automatically vanishes.”
Alejandra Molano, Senior Manager at DesignOps, says attention to detail is one of her greatest strengths. “I honed a pixel-perfect approach in my visual design background. It meant noticing the tiniest details and intuitively recognising whether a design is on brand. In product design, this is a great asset for art direction. However, there’s a downside to it. They say perfectionism is the enemy of done. Sometimes, people like me can be so hyper-focused on the details that we take longer to deliver. The challenge here is learning when to let go of perfection. There’s a sweet spot between meeting deadlines without compromising on quality.”
Idowu agrees that there is a flip side to being an achiever. “In the early phase of my design career, I always focused on my development areas and over time, I lost sight of my strengths. However, after joining Zalando, my lead helped me focus on doubling down on what I’m skilled at. She said that not being as good in some areas doesn’t mean I’m terrible at those things. That struck a chord with me. It made so much sense that I could achieve better results by leveraging my strengths. I like this about Zalando; our leads empower and seek to understand us. As a result, I have become a well-rounded specialist.”
Practice self-awareness
It is hard for most people to say they know themselves completely. In any case, as Idowu says, “knowing ourselves 100% would mean we don’t have anything left to learn!” What is perhaps most important — as was the principal meaning attributed to the famous ancient Greek maxim “know thyself” — is to be aware of our abilities. From there, we can build a picture of the roles and environments in which we thrive, where our boundaries lie, and how to communicate our needs.
To cultivate self-knowledge, Idowu recommends doing a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis of yourself. SWOT analyses are primarily used in strategic business planning to evaluate market positioning. However, applying the framework to your career trajectory can help you identify which direction you want to go in.
“You know your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges,” says Idowu. “Of course, that will change depending on what phase of your life you are in. However, you can evaluate opportunities in terms of how they relate to you right now and maintain a dialogue with yourself. It helps to align with your values, boundaries, and growth plans. It’s a great tool to navigate your career consciously while staying true to yourself.”
Israel safeguards his well-being by practising continual self-awareness. “Multiple studies confirm that neurodivergent individuals experience stress related to the coping mechanisms and masking we develop to fit into neurotypical environments. The level of energy and concentration this requires is extremely high. Alongside maintaining high self-awareness, I am cautious of how many individual or group interactions I can manage in a given period.”
Self-awareness also encourages self-compassion. “When I first started suspecting I might be neurodivergent,” explains Alejandra, “I did a lot of research that helped me better understand my challenges and needs. That led to me being more compassionate to myself and others, including avoiding comparison and setting unreasonable expectations. Having the right words for my challenges helped me to own them and give them visibility.”
Encourage flexibility
Environments that promote standardised behaviour, processes, and ways of working present clear challenges for neurodivergent people.
“An implicit expectation to fit the cultural normativities of a space, and any rigidity around relating, highly affects the creative output of neurodivergent individuals,” says Israel. “As a designer, I am expected to bring creative solutions that not only facilitate tasks for users but bring a certain level of emotion while using the product. With that in mind, when it comes to processes, tools, and rituals, it is important to allow space for divergent thinking while keeping a more procedural approach in the convergent phases.”
Creating an inclusive environment means being considerate of different ways of working and ready to adapt to each other’s needs. “To get the most out of an ideation session, it helps me to have a frame of action,” explains Alejandra. “It’s important that whoever’s facilitating it takes the time to give an introduction, set the context, and provide space to ask initial questions. I keep this in mind when facilitating for others as I know some people struggle with too much freedom or a blank canvas. This level of consideration applies to every collaboration.”
Climb the mountain together
Our success in product design hinges on the success of our collaboration. When it comes to collaborating with neurodivergent teammates, pairing up can encourage a bountiful creative symbiosis.
As DesignOps Manager Chad Wright discovered in his previous role as a Principal Content Designer, such pairings are an opportunity for mutual enrichment. The close collaboration with his neurodivergent former colleague was so inspiring that they ended up sharing the framework they established in a conference talk.
“People think of success as a ladder with rungs representing different levels of your career,” Chad explains. “At the top of the ladder, in the leadership position, people tend to think of a certain type of person: the delegating director, the visionary CEO, the self-made billionaire. They might have a specific working style or set of character traits. Unpacking that stereotype, the traditional picture of a successful leader is very restrictive. The ladder metaphor represents one path to success. It is not optimised for differing abilities or identities. In the talk, we proposed replacing the ladder with a mountain. Not only are there many paths to the top, but success can be a more collaborative journey. On the ladder, you think about climbing over others, whereas, on the mountain, you think about climbing with others and being reliant on partnerships for your safety and success.”
The mutual reliance that Chad and his colleague experienced grew from an openness about each other’s strengths, needs, and challenges. “The vulnerability we shared created a safe space for mutual development. My colleague was great at ideating and sparring about topics but struggled with multitasking or more focused tasks. Meanwhile, I was strong in those areas. Rather than being prescriptive, we were able to balance our skills and figure out a complementary way of working that maximised our output.”
Avoiding prescriptiveness is also a brilliant approach for people leads who wish to create an inclusive and fruitful collaborative environment. As Chad says, “Regardless of someone’s abilities or identity, asking them how they prefer to work is always a great place to start. It’s about creating scenarios where people feel empowered to express in their own way without feeling under pressure.”
Visibility inspires inclusivity
Creating inclusive spaces extends to our community culture and physical workplace. As Alejandra explains, being open about our challenges can inspire openness in others and give visibility to necessary accommodations.
“Accommodating neurodiversity ranges from clarifying expectations around deadlines to dimming the lights in the meeting room for people with sensory sensitivities. I have found that when I ask my teammates if they are comfortable with me dimming the lights, others speak up that they have the same sensitivity but never thought to mention their discomfort. Whenever I voice my needs to my team, they are incredibly understanding. For example, my teammates understand that I sometimes need space in the office. There’s a beautiful Zalando initiative that provides quiet zones in our offices: low-density areas for colleagues who wish to maintain social distance. These areas are great for focus time and help me decompress after energetically demanding meetings.”
“Many situations and processes in product design can be unpredictable,” Israel adds. “They require us to be more specific about our individual needs to our colleagues, and not wait to the detriment of our well-being. Maybe we need more focus time on a specific task or to collectively iterate on our ways of working for the current phase of the collaboration. It is a continuous dialogue between self-awareness and the collective awareness we foster as a team.”
Communicate at your own pace
Of course, not everyone feels comfortable being open about their neurodivergence in the workplace — and that’s okay.
“Sometimes I find it very challenging to be authentic for fear of being misunderstood,” Idowu shares. “Company culture plays a big role. It’s great to be able to communicate at your own pace and own your uniqueness in a space that accommodates you. However, I have worked in organisations where it was safer to keep things to myself. I can be quite sensitive about how I am perceived. I do not want to be boxed in.”
“Challenging the status quo around associated assumptions and stigmas requires a lot of listening, empathy, and effort from all the people involved,” says Israel. “Whether or not someone decides to make their diagnosis public is a very personal decision, and depends on multiple factors.”
Do not be afraid to ask for support
Nonetheless, in whatever environment we work in, and however open we choose to be, the onus lies with us to ask for the support we need.
“I think it is crucial,” says Israel, “not to try to hide when and how we struggle with something and in which conditions we thrive. Connecting from the beginning on how we can collaborate is an easier conversation to have, and plants the seeds for a safer space. Reducing the fear of acceptance allows you to flourish in your strengths.”
“There are things within your control that are safe to be communicated,” says Idowu. “I am sometimes uncomfortable handling large groups so I break them down and identify the right people to help me. I ask myself questions like, ‘Who understands this area? Who has done it before?’. Then I reach out to them directly. I have gotten so much support from people this way at Zalando, even from those who do not know me. We have such an amazing community.”
Alejandra says Zalando’s Neurodiversity employee resource group (ERG) has been an instrumental support network. “There are monthly meetings to connect and create together informally. It’s a safe space to discuss our challenges, provide mutual support, and exchange reading material, resources and helpful tips. I learnt from this group that we can manually dim the lights at the office in the area where we are sitting, and that every employee has access to one very important benefit provided by Zalando: Psychosocial support through counselling with experts from the Fürstenberg institut. I’ve found this immensely valuable.”
Rise to the challenge
Sometimes life has it that we don’t choose certain opportunities; they choose us because we are ready.
“I have a strong sense of accountability and this always shows up when opportunities arise,” says Idowu. “While working on a major recent project, there was a change in the resources within the team that left a huge gap. Unconsciously, I followed through to ensure we met the set deadline as it was a key focus for our organisation. Afterwards, my skip lead pointed out that I took ownership. I hadn’t thought of it like that. When you know what you’re good at and are open to opportunities, those opportunities will come. I’ve always had a bad case of imposter syndrome, which is very common for people like me. Nowadays, instead of questioning myself and overanalysing, I always find the will to rise above those anxieties. I have found my place. I wish that for others like me too.”
Do you have any advice on how to navigate your unique differences and flourish in product design? Please feel free to share them in the comments!
Next, Zalando product design community members share insights embracing the spectrum of introversion, extroversion, and ambiversion to bring out the best in your team.
