August 2026
Bringing neuroinclusive design into design education
What does it really mean to design a space that more people can use, understand and feel comfortable in?
I recently had the pleasure of joining MA Interior Design students at Arts University Bournemouth as a guest speaker for a session exploring neuroinclusion and the built environment.
My session, Designing for Different Minds: How neuroinclusive interiors can support confidence, independence and participation, looked beyond the idea of accessibility as something added to a space at the end of the design process.
Instead, we explored a much bigger question:
How might somebody experience this space differently from me?
One of the most important messages I wanted students to take away was that there is no single way to design for a neurodivergent person.
An autistic person will not automatically prefer a quiet environment. A person with ADHD will not necessarily want a highly stimulating one. People can have overlapping needs, apparently contradictory preferences, and needs that change according to the activity, environment, stress, fatigue and what else has happened that day.
That is why I believe neuroinclusive design should be about choice, flexibility and reducing unnecessary barriers, rather than creating separate spaces for separate diagnoses.
A person should not have to disclose or justify a diagnosis simply to use a seating option, quieter area or communication method that works better for them.
We also considered the experience of an environment as a journey.
It starts long before somebody walks through the door.
Can they find clear information about what to expect? What will the entrance look like? Where do they go? Will there be queues? What will the lighting, noise or crowds be like? How will they know where the toilets are or who to ask for help?
Once inside, we looked at sensory demand, including acoustics, lighting, temperature, smells, visual clutter and movement, alongside navigation, signage, communication and the cognitive effort involved in understanding a space.
We discussed practical approaches including clearer visual hierarchy and wayfinding, logical zoning, visible destinations, different seating positions, lower-sensory options, places to pause, clearer pre-visit information and greater choice over how people interact with a space.
Much of my approach is informed by PAS 6463:2022, Design for the mind: Neurodiversity and the built environment, alongside lived experience and my wider work supporting organisations to think about accessibility across the whole customer or visitor journey.
PAS 6463 is particularly helpful because it recognises that the built environment can itself create sensory and cognitive barriers. But standards and guidance become most powerful when we translate them into the experience of the person who will actually use the space.
One of the exercises I shared was very simple.
If you are designing a consulting room, for example, don't only walk into it as the designer.
Sit where the visitor will sit. Lie on the couch if that is how the room will be used. Look at what is directly in their eyeline. Listen. Notice the lighting. Think about texture, proximity, privacy, sound and what happens if they need to leave.
The designer's view of a room is not necessarily the user's experience of it.
That idea particularly resonated with incoming MA student and designer Bri Riley-Moore, who subsequently wrote about the session on her Surface & Soul blog.
Her reflection was probably one of the loveliest outcomes I could have hoped for, because rather than simply saying that she enjoyed the session, she wrote about how she was already beginning to apply the thinking to her own practice.
One sentence particularly stayed with me:
“Small accommodations can still make a meaningful difference.”
Exactly.
We can sometimes make inclusion feel impossibly complicated.
Of course there are situations where substantial design interventions are needed. But there are also countless opportunities to make experiences easier through thoughtful decisions.
Better information.
Clearer signage.
Choice of seating.
Somewhere to pause without having to explain why.
Reduced unnecessary noise or glare.
Different ways of asking for help.
Knowing what is going to happen next.
These may appear small in isolation, but together they can determine whether somebody feels confident enough to enter, participate and return.
And many of these changes improve the experience for everybody.
That is the principle I want emerging designers to take into their work.
Not a checklist of what an “autistic space” or an “ADHD-friendly space” should look like, but the habit of continually asking:
Who might experience this differently, where are we creating unnecessary barriers, and what choices could we build in?
I loved delivering this session because the opportunity to influence inclusive thinking while designers are developing their practice feels incredibly valuable.
I offer guest lectures, webinars and interactive sessions for universities and higher education courses exploring neuroinclusion, inclusive environments and the customer or user experience.
Sessions can be adapted for students studying areas including interior design, interior architecture, architecture, hospitality, customer experience and other disciplines concerned with how people experience spaces and services.
They combine current guidance including PAS 6463, practical examples, lived experience and exercises which encourage students to look beyond how a space appears and consider how it is actually experienced.
Because being able to enter a space is not the same as being able to participate in it.
And good inclusive design starts with understanding the difference.