5 Reasons neurodiverse brains are excellent for creative roles.

Originally Published on LinkedIn: Article Source

Often when covering the topic of disability inclusion and careers I dig into the limitations that might require some accommodation or consideration. However today I'd like to take a different approach to this conversation, let's focus on the strengths & potential!

Here are some of the reasons I think people with neurodiverse brains make exceptional creative leaders and designers. 

This list is based on my opinion, my personal experience and not to be considered all-inclusive of all neurodiverse people. I'm going to reference myself because this is a brain I am an expert in. My hope is that this is not used as a way to stereotype anyone but rather a way to shift our thinking from the negative to the positive. After reading this article my hope is that you can see the incredible potential and possibly under-recognized value you or your organization can find in employing and embracing the neurodiverse community. For my neurodiverse readers, I hope that you can read this and feel a great sense of confidence and belonging in the incredible value you bring to your trade.  

Over the past 18 months I have had to do a lot of work and self-reflection to define what I am good at. What I can and can't do as a result of my disabilities and what I love to do or don't love to do because, hey mental health! 

Through that journey I also found a few themes that align mostly to neurodiversity. Now, because of my disabilities from Ramsay Hunt Syndrome some of these things listed are no longer my strengths, but prior to that they were. So that will be my frame of reference for this article.

Years ago when researching designing for autism, I found a list of do's and don't that changed my life. I will write a future article (coming soon) on that specific experience. However when doing that research I wanted to better understand not only worked best for people on the autism spectrum but why. With the journey of understanding why, I recognized some incredible strengths those preferences and needs bring to someone looking to have a career in design. So here it goes.

#1 Color: 

When designing for Autistic people they recommend avoiding loud and highly contrasting bright colors. When designing physical spaces they recommend using colors to create an engaging environment but not an overly busy or distracting space. 

I find that I can see color with more specificity or range compared to the average person. Now this might be that I have eyes like a bee or tetrachromacy. But it's also possible that it's just a spectrum brain at work, because many people on the spectrum are more sensitive or aware of color. So whether its bumble bee vision or a brain that is more tuned into color it doesn't matter. I think this is a bit of a super power for designers. A great designer can identify when a shade of a color is off, that makes them great creators and brand enforcers. A person with a neurodiverse brain may be more likely to be able to identify when a color isn't "right". 

Let's put this to a more practical example for everyone to relate to. Have your ever painted a room white? When you go the the paint store you suddenly are faced with a daunting reality... so many whites! Grey white, green white, pink whites and pure whites. Now a designer loves this because a warm white conveys a different vibe than a cool white. So here is to the the super-skill of color perception. 

#2 Spacing and alignment: 

This can apply to autism, OCD and many other neurovariances. Order, patterns and consistency are a key design principal. Today spacing and alignment grids are typically part of a brands style guide and design system. As someone with a neurodiversity order, patterns and consistency are a way of life. My pantry, drawers, decor, spice racks are straight out of Instagram and The Home Edit. 

In career use, this is a wonderful strength and skill as a designer. I am viscerally bothered by designs that are poorly aligned and lack consistent and breathable spacing. While definitely annoying to anyone neurotypical that lives under the same roof as me... this in my opinion is another one I'll add to my list of super-skills. Organization, categorization, patterns, consistency, structure can be strengths of a nuerodivergent brain. 

#3 Impactful Messaging:  

This one might be more surprising or even controversial, please feel free to comment below if you agree or disagree on this one. But in my opinion this is a strength. Creative roles are not limited to visual design, they also include copy, messaging and storytelling. I know I use the art of copy and storytelling often in my career. While I would never get a job as a copywriter because my grammar, spelling and punctuation use is horrific; I do create messaging and storytelling regularly. 

There are a few principles in accessibility and inclusive creative that relate to use of plain and easy to understand language, avoiding the use of jargon and figures of speech. These are part of the WCAG guidelines for accessibility. However these are also principles that are important for campaign creation, presentations and other activities like the creation of taglines and slogans. I spend more than half of my time creating and delivering presentations, the less wordy and more direct and compelling the content the better the audience engagement.

The reason I mentioned surprising or controversial is that there is often a perception that people with neurodiversity struggle with communication. So the natural instinct may be to assume that a neurodiverse brain would not be strong at creating impactful messaging, I would like the challenge that thinking. I believe that the direct, unfiltered communication style of people on the spectrum can be incredibly strong at creating impactful, punchy and memorable messaging that can be understood and appreciated by many.

#4 Creative Problem Solvers & Innovators:

Navigating the neurotypical world with a neurodivergent brain means you are in the constant state of problem solving. We are constantly analyzing and figuring out the puzzle that is a neurotypical world. So that means our puzzle solving abilities can be very strong and well-honed. We also have to get creative in that problem solving. 

Thomas Armstrong, author of The Power of Neurodiversity, mentions that employers often continue to unintentionally exclude or discard great talent. Widespread lack of neurodiversity inclusion amongst organizations up to now – and the collective missing out on the benefits it can provide – is likely to have been caused by a number of factors. One is a Neurodiversity at work Neurodiversity at work Introduction typical focus on ‘generalists’ – an approach now challenged by those employers seeking innovation ‘from the edges’ by deliberately building (neuro)diverse teams. 

This explains why I was drawn for several years to work in innovation, thinking outside-the-box and more cutting-edge or bleeding-edge approaches comes naturally to me. It's easy to think outside-the-box when you don't have a box. I rarely, if ever focus on concepts like "this is just how it's done" or "we have been doing it this way for years". I'm not held to those constructs or limitations, I usually am just figuring out a way to "do it" that works or makes sense to me.

I love this quote from an interview: "I have a multi-level way of thinking and I can engage with lots of different things at the same time. The way I think allows me to have a fairly high degree of analysis and out-of-the-box thinking. When you have challenges that affect you differently to others you have to be creative to fit in. I’ve had to bypass systems that other people find natural and I’ve had to find innovative ways to get to conclusions," - reference link to full article

So another strength a neurodiverse individual can have is creative thinking and problem solving, outside-the-box ideas and innovation. Hey, have you ever noticed that some of the worlds most notable innovators are on the spectrum or suspected to be on the spectrum... ah ha! 

#5 Research, depth of knowledge & subject matter expertise

One of the characteristics they look for when assessing if someone is on the spectrum is referred to as "special interests", now back in the day this was widely misunderstood and pigeon-holed. Because the studies and diagnostic criteria were initially hyper-focused on young males only, this was misrepresented as having a strong interest in topics like cars and trains. Slight tangent for a second, but if you are exclusively studying male children for your data it's not an autistic interest in cars and trains, it's a young male child common interest. But today there is improvement on broadening that thinking. The criteria of special interests can be broad and diverse. 

I like to call it "going down the rabbit hole" on a topic. Something peaks my interest and suddenly 5 hours later I've watched 97 youtube videos on the topic, read 45 blog posts, followed 15 instagram accounts on the topic and so on. But it's not uncommon for people on the spectrum to dive deep into a topic and want to consume as much information on it as possible and become experts on the topic. 

So in practical use this makes for a great researcher and subject matter expert. In the lens of creative, you can envision this as someone who might know a great amount on the design history, passionate about typography and can name the fonts used in signage, someone with a expert level of knowledge on any topic or the willingness to become an expert of a topic.

One can become a subject matter expert by way of real world life experience on the subject or the completion of extensive research on a subject. This is often a strength and skillset a neurodiverse brain operates very naturally in.

I hope that this overview provides some inspiration for you on how to reconsider neurodiversity. If you have a colleague, employee or supervisor that is on the spectrum or neurodiverse consider embracing these types of strengths. 

If you are a hiring manager consider adjusting your candidate selection process and interview practices to be more inclusive of neurodiversity. It's a fact the majority of neurodiverse adults are unemployed or underemployed, with less than half of autistic adults employed. And of those, many are only working part-time.