Designing for Neurodivergent Minds

In this episode, Lyssia sits down with Dr. Kati Peditto, a researcher focused on the intersection of human behavior, neuroscience, and the built environment, to talk about neuroinclusive design and why designing for the brain should be a standard part of every project. The conversation goes far beyond sensory rooms and explores how environments affect cognitive load, behavior, stress, productivity, and overall human experience.

They discuss why many spaces are designed with good intentions but still fail the people using them, the importance of autonomy and choice in environments, and how designers, clients, and communities can start creating spaces that work for more people — including neurodivergent individuals, people with temporary injuries, aging populations, and anyone who has ever felt overwhelmed, distracted, or uncomfortable in a space.

More Room to Think:

Dr. Kati Peditto
Website: https://www.katipeditto.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katipeditto/

LiLi Tile
https://lilitile.com

Room to Think
https://roomtothinkpodcast.com/

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Transcript

What High-Performance Spaces Mean

Dr. Kati Peditto 0:00

A high performance environment is an environment that is taking into account the needs of their occupants' brains and behaviors.

Lyssia Katan 0:08

About two years ago, I ruptured my Achilles and had to have surgery, and I was on a bike, like one of those scooters. The main entrance was not ADA compliant, and these are the things that you never realize until you have to realize.

Dr. Kati Peditto 0:23

Sensory rooms are our opportunity as an industry to figure out what works and what does not work.

Lyssia Katan 0:31

Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Dr. Kati Peditto 0:32

Neuroinclusive design is not just sensory rooms or sensory design.

Lyssia Katan 0:38

When you think about the future of design, what do you hope shifts in how we design for real human beings?

Dr. Kati Peditto 0:45

I hope that we in 10 years are at a point where.

Lyssia Katan 2:50

Am I missing anything?

Dr. Kati Peditto 2:51

No, that was great. I loved that. Yeah, that captures all of the things that are most important to me, that we're working from both lived experience and other forms of evidence and research, um, but that we're crossing sectors and typologies and occupant populations. This is really a holistic look at how we create better spaces for our brains.

From ICU Alarms To Design Research

Lyssia Katan 3:14

I love that. That's exactly what we're talking about on the podcast. So, Dr. Pedito, what got you started? Like, why do you do what you do?

A Cross-Country Run Changes Everything

Dr. Kati Peditto 3:23

My bachelor's degree is in psychology. And if you know anyone with a bachelor's degree in psychology, they often have to do something else in order to figure out what they really want to do with a college degree in psych. Um, and I knew that I didn't want to do counseling, I didn't want to do clinical work. But I was working as a researcher in a study at Johns Hopkins Hospital where we were investigating how well physicians and nurses in an ICU could identify different alarms on the unit. Now, on this unit, you could have up to 16 different alarms on any given day. And what we found was that nurses and physicians on this unit could really only accurately discriminate or identify two of those alarms. And that signaled to me a really missed opportunity for our brains and behavior to be aligned with the design of the environment. At that time, I was really looking at medical device technology and how we create better alarms and infusion pumps. But I then quickly pivoted my first year of grad school. I went to grad school, I knew I wanted to do research. I was in a program at Cornell University. Um, the PhD was human behavior and design. But I am not a designer. I have never been a designer. I'm still not a designer. So I had to really figure out what design meant for me there. My advisor at the time was an architect, and I hadn't really intersected with architecture too much, other than thinking maybe broadly about acoustics, but it wasn't really on my radar. I was much more heavily focused on ergonomics and human factors, like smaller scale things. My first year of grad school, I had come straight from undergrad. I was totally burnt out. I was like very over being in grad school. And I knew that I needed a break. So I talked to my advisor. I had a wonderful department, and they said, sure, take a summer off, do something different. And when you're ready, come back, which is a little unheard of for a PhD. So all of my gratitude to them because I ended up accepting a position as the director of a run across the country in summer 2016. So this like supposed break from academia was a run from San Francisco to Baltimore for 49 days.

Lyssia Katan 6:11

Wow.

Cancer Care Spaces Miss Young Adults

Dr. Kati Peditto 6:11

I led a team of 26 college-age students. Um, it was all a fundraiser for the 4K for cancer, for the Ullman Cancer Fund for Young Adults. I'd connected with them because I had explored my own genetic history and they had mentioned this opportunity to me. And I thought, I've been looking for something totally different and I need a break. So, sure, sign me up. Sounds great. Um, so for 49 days, we ran anywhere from 12 to 16 miles a day, kind of relay style. We stopped in different locations, predetermined locations along our route. And we didn't bring any food with us. We only brought sleeping bags and a handful of clothes because we would send some people ahead of us in the in a van and ask them to get food donations. So we would go into the the next town and say, hey, there's a group of 26 of us. We're coming into town. Do you have any pizza or sandwiches or things that you can donate? And we never went hungry. Like the goodness of people was just so on display. We put our sleeping bags down in like school gyms, a lot of like community centers, churches, anywhere that would let us just crash for the night. And all of the money went to the Ullman Cancer Fund. So I promise there is a, there is a segue to this story. But since you asked where this all came from, the Ullman Cancer Fund was providing scholarships and other support materials to young adults with cancer. And along the way, that meant that we would stop by hospitals and other care facilities where young people with cancer were being treated. And every time we went, we were going to a pediatric hospital that was full of like stuffed animals and balloons and like cutesy things and primary colors. And yet we would be meeting up with someone who was like college-aged. And it felt immediate, immediately to me, like there was a discrepancy in the way that the built environment had been designed for this really vulnerable age group, right? Adolescents and young adults. And every time we went, they would say, Oh my God, it's so good to see someone my age. So again, this is my researcher hat on. I'm trying to take my researcher hat off for a summer. My research hat is back on, recognizing that there is clearly something really wrong with the built environment that is still affecting patient safety and quality, but in a very different way than I had ever imagined. So I went back to school and I went back to my advisor and proposed this topic, that there was a, there was something very wrong with the way that we had designed the built environment. It was not aligned with the developmental milestones of adolescence and young adulthood. It had not been designed with adolescents and young adults as part of the design process. There was no sense of like ownership and iteration with young people. And I argued that it would dramatically affect the success of treatment. And what I found ultimately in my dissertation was that it did. There is a significant impact of the design of the built environment, the adequacy of the built environment on health-related quality of life for young people with cancer. Had nothing to do with the treatment protocol, had nothing to do with medication or anything else. But you could see an effect of the built environment beyond anything physiological. So that, long story long, I think that was the moment where I recognized the potential for someone like me to make a measurable impact on human outcomes and human experience for vulnerable people without ever needing to get a clinical degree or do something in counseling, right? And it wasn't until recently that I started to marry that professional experience with my own personal experience as an autistic woman with ADHD. But that's been my trajectory recently, taking that research expertise, that discrepancy, inadequacy in space that I've recognized in many different moments over my career, and now marrying that with my own lived experience and the lived experience of other individuals who are neurodivergent.

Lyssia Katan 11:04

I have friends that work in hospitals and they're nurses, and you hear about the kids, you hear about the children, you hear about the NICU and all the beautiful colors and the stuffed animals. You don't hear about the adolescents that are going through puberty. They're 15, 16, 17, even like going through early adolescence in these hospitals, and they still have to walk around with, you know, teddy bears and Nicki Mouse around them. Like, what was the first thing you really like laser focused on when you were in there? Were they just like treated like children?

Dr. Kati Peditto 11:37

There was a lot of good intention for this age group. Typically, adolescents and young adults with cancer, as defined by many cancer organizations, is ages 15 to 39, which is like a crazy age range that no one in the developmental psychology world would ever lump together. Except the type of cancer most frequent in that age range was most similar to pediatric cancers. So if you wanted to see someone who was an expert in your particular cancer, you had to go to a children's hospital. But there were a lot of well-meaning physicians and facility designers who recognized that they hadn't anticipated a need for this population. And they would, I visited every single place in the US that designated a spot for AYA, adolescent and young adult cancer. And most of the time, first of all, there were only like eight of these at the time. Almost every single one of them was a repurposed closet or staff room or rec room type thing, right? There's not a lot of space on in any hospital system to just give away or repurpose. But these folks were really, really trying their best. And what I noticed at every single facility, there was always a foosball table or a ping pong table or an air hockey table, like something like that. And every single young person I talk to, because I mentioned this, like, hey, what do you do you use the ping pong table? What are you thinking? If you are an inpatient being treated for cancer, so you're you are in the hospital, you're not doing outpatient chemo or radiation. You are in the hospital. Maybe you've had a bone marrow transplant, something like that. Often that means that you are hooked to an IV pole. You can't play air hockey if you're tethered to an IV pole. And so that to me was just like such a simple example, but so powerful and indicative of the fact that the folks who were designing this space, even with the best intentions, still were not adequately assessing their population. They weren't co-designing with these folks. It was yet another opportunity for individuals who could have felt included and seen and cared for. And now there was yet another artifact of invisibility, right? Like, well, thanks for the room. I guess I can't do anything in here. So that's it. It was so bizarre because it was so universal. Like, oh, this must be what kids like, so we're gonna put it in there. There was no iteration. There was no like, let's go back and see if this worked and switch it up a little bit. So, yeah, to answer your question, Lysia, that's the thing that stood out to me time and time again.

Lyssia Katan 14:51

You recognize this, and then as you moved forward in your career, how have you been able to shift that? And now I also want to talk about like the neurodivergent aspect of design as well. But so, how did that take? How did you go from that moment and starting your research to where you are today? And how have you been able to incorporate or make these changes?

Why One-Size Assumptions Fail People

Dr. Kati Peditto 15:16

That was my just my doctoral research was the first opportunity that I saw firsthand, the impact of the design of the built environment. And firsthand, how poorly our traditional design process incorporates feedback from vulnerable populations. It's a pretty simple leap from there to notice many other places and typologies and populations that have just been invisible in the design process for so long. Even at your typical university, right? There are a lot of designers who just assume that young people make friends by being in a space together. If we design a common room and put a couple of chairs and a video game console in it, then freshmen will meet each other. And that's just simply not how young people work. And why didn't you ever ask anybody? The same thing happens even far more frequently with neurodivergent folks. There are so many assumptions about what neurodivergent individuals need in the built environment. A lot of them are assumptions about sensory needs, but no one has really adequately validated any of these assumptions, especially knowing that every neurodivergent person is different, right? There's a common saying, if you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism. But also a neurodivent experience in a primary school, for example, is going to be totally different than the neurodivergent experience in a hospital waiting room. So there are just, it's just so pervasive that we've made these blanket one size fits all assumptions, not just about young people with cancer, but about much bigger, far more invisible populations as well.

Lyssia Katan 17:20

What kinds of questions are you looking at? Because you said individuals with autism are so different and so unique. Like when you walk into a space, can you pick out, okay, this might be an issue and this might be overstimulating? Like, how do you how do you start?

Dr. Kati Peditto 17:34

I am often looking at the sensory landscape at first. I think that's a very obvious one. Um, that's something that I am very sensitive to in my own kind of neurodivergent autistic profile. So acoustics, uh, visual stimulation, crowding, those are all sensory elements that I think I'm quite sensitive to. Um, but there are also a lot of other challenges beyond the sensory profile of the space that I think get lost often when we're talking about neuroinclusive design. A lot of folks use neuroinclusive and sensory design almost interchangeably. And that is a huge part of it, right? That's like a huge portion of the neurodivergent experience navigating through space. But there are also a big part of it that's about autonomy and agency and choice. If I'm feeling crowded, if it feels too loud or too visually stimulating, do I have the opportunity to select a different area? Are there other zones that I can be in? Do I have the ability to move my body in a way that might help soothe? And that's not necessarily just the presence of a sensory room. It's a much bigger conversation about autonomy and agency. The ability to just go into a sensory room if I'm feeling overwhelmed and dysregulated does not mean that the space has is actually neuroinclusive. I shouldn't need a sensory room. Ideally, I get through the airport, for example, without feeling so completely dysregulated that I need to fully retreat. So I'm looking for more than just the standard indicators that someone has thought of autistic airport visitors, right? Um, I want to make sure that individuals have their sensory needs met, but that they also have agency to move throughout the space, that there is clarity about how to navigate the space as well. You can have a flexible area, you can have a flexible facility. That's not at odds with also having clear, predictable rules as well. I've seen this happens a lot in higher education, where we will put a we'll design a really cool active learning classroom that's supposed to accommodate all kinds of minds and all different ways of seeking knowledge and collaborating individual versus group versus lecture on display. And we can do all of that with furniture and finishings. But when we go back a year later, we often find that those rooms never really get moved around. The furniture doesn't get moved into pods the way that we imagined it might be. Because as flexible and adaptable as the space is, it's still unclear how you might use it to meet your needs. And people don't know if they're allowed to use it. That's also part of clarity. So one of my recommendations there is to usually in in K-12 and high-ed make them make a little booklet or a sign on the wall showing different ways of using the space. So I guess in like a hierarchy, my first, my like spidey senses are usually for the big sensory issues. But meeting those needs is not enough to create a neuro-inclusive space. We then want to look deeper at the clarity and predictability of the space as well as the ability to flex and adapt.

Sensory Needs Plus Agency And Clarity

Lyssia Katan 21:41

So, do you feel like a lot of these places or these spaces are designed with good intentions? But because the individuals using these spaces are not instructed, like, hey, you can move things around. Hey, you can you can use it this way. It's just kind of like thrown together, like we did it, you know? It's not really, besides giving permission, they're not shown how to make the most use of the space.

Dr. Kati Peditto 22:07

Yeah. And I, from a business perspective, we want, as designers or consultants, um manufacturers, we want our clients to get the most out of their investment. So there's value in some type of change management process, if that's teaching educators how to better use the space, if it's making sure that facilities know how to reset the space. Like there are a lot of different ways that we can provide that clarity so that our clients get the most out of their investment. We don't want to design a room that never gets used when we've outfitted it with a bunch of really cool furniture. So I think that's a missed opportunity. Again, thinking about the design process and where the design process often fails us. Change management, iteration in post-occupancy, those are often missed opportunities because we all do, I completely agree, these spaces are designed with the best intentions. I don't know anyone doing this work that is just doing it to make a buck or, you know, hand off the project and be done, right? We all want to improve the human experience, but we're missing opportunities to do that.

Lyssia Katan 23:20

I watched one of your videos about the five tenets of design. And I'm curious, this kind of leads into that conversation where you were discussing how sometimes these elements or these spaces are created with in order to allow individuals to go get up and use them, or if they feel a little overstimulated, they can go to a different space. But they're not allowed to, or it's frowned upon when they actually do use them. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Sensory Rooms Safety Versus Access

Dr. Kati Peditto 23:49

I'll go back to sensory rooms because I do feel like sensory rooms are our opportunity as an industry to figure out what works and what does not work as like a little bite-sized proxy for neuroinclusive design. When I see sensory rooms, often they have some type of access control. You have to call someone to get it unlocked, you have to press a button to talk to someone who can remote unlock. Like there, there's some type of barrier to getting in. If you are dysregulated and you need a retreat space immediately, that gate is already going to add to your sensory overwhelm. But like, what's the solution? Is it just a space that's completely unlocked? Because I've also been in sensory rooms that are unlocked. There's one way in and one way out, there's no windows, and it feels very unsafe as a young single woman. So, how do we balance access control with safety and security? A little easier when you're talking about young kids that are going to be with their parents, but a little more challenging when you're talking about a space that's designed for all types of folks, all ages of folks, you know, an intersectional place for everyone who visits the facility. I think we haven't quite gotten that right yet. I wish I had an answer to be like, this is the way that you design a safe space. Um, but it's gonna be different if you're at an airport versus a school. Access control is gonna look totally different. The other thing I often see as a challenge, again, we're talking about sensory rooms, but it's kind of a broader theory on where neuroinclusive design still has yet to go. I think we are often equating dysregulation with a need for silence or low stimulation. Most sensory rooms are going to be low lighting. Maybe if they've got like a little bubbler, um, they might have a comfy couch, they might have a couple of little things for you to fidget with. But overall, the experience is designed to be extremely low sensory. And that can be really, really valuable. In fact, for individuals who are experiencing sensory overwhelm, like that's the source of their dysregulation, that is a very good place to be. But if that is the only option for neurodivergent folks in your workplace, school, hospital, airport, then you are completely missing an entirely different group of neurodivergent folks who may simply need an equitable space, but away from the milieu of, you know, the terminal or the waiting room. It doesn't have to be this super quiet, isolated, alone space. It could be a space where individuals can do work. They can talk to their partners or the people that they're with. Those are other ways of self-regulating that we often miss when we do sensory room and, you know, more broadly, neuroinclusive design.

Lyssia Katan 27:18

For someone listening who has never experienced a sensory room, is or maybe isn't neurodivergent. How can you describe it and what needs to be in there for it to be like a good quality sensory room? Because I don't think I've ever like experienced one or seen them really at airports or anywhere.

A Model Airport Sensory Room

Dr. Kati Peditto 27:38

I will encourage anyone listening. Next time you're going through an airport, or even if you're at a major sporting event, a lot of arenas and sports facilities are starting to integrate them more. Try to seek them out. Part of the neurodiversity paradigm is that everyone's brains are different. So you're not excluded from being in these spaces. I will say, if there's someone in there who clearly needs to regulate, be conscientious. But these are meant to be spaces for all different types of experiences. My favorite sensory room, if someone needs a visual and they want to go online and find something, there's a couple of good walkthroughs on social media. Um, HKS designed a sensory room in the Grand Rapids Airport in collaboration with the disability advocates of Kent County, who are based out of Grand Rapids. So already you're checking a big box for me, right? Like you collaborated with a disability advocacy group. Amazing. Great job. This room is right off of a terminal. So if you are in the Grand Rapids Airport, it's actually quite obvious where it is. You don't have to take out a map or seek someone out in the terminal to figure out where you need to go if you're feeling overwhelmed. It is access controlled, but not in a way that is a huge barrier. It's a push a button, door clicks open. Um, so you do have a sense that there is privacy and security, but not that you need to legitimize your reason for being there. I don't ever want to click a button and have to say, I'm having a dysregulation event. Please let me in your room. I need to explain myself to anybody. And in fact, in this circumstance, I was really only there to see what it was about. There were several different zones to this room. So you walk in and you have an opportunity to go in what I would consider to be more of their pediatric zoned area. There were more things to play with. It was clearly a space where sound and noise were encouraged and okay. So if you went with a parent, for example, um, your children have a space to play and regulate in a smaller, you know, smaller scale than being right out in the main terminal. There were also other zones, including ones where you could be in what felt like a, I don't even know how I would describe it, like a almost like a clinic room where there's a bed. Um, and you can lay down. You have your choice of what visual stimulation you want, uh, auditory stimulation. There were, there was a very, very cool technology interface to choose, kind of choose your own adventure. And broadly, that's what made this space really successful. It really was a choose your own adventure. Take stock of your own needs and choose your space within this, within this room. And it it was bigger than a room. I think that was another thing that made it successful. So I would encourage all of you to check out the Grand Rapids Airport sensory room. That is my favorite so far that I have ever seen. I don't even work for HKS. I really find that to be one of the most successful, inclusive projects that is true to what I believe a process should look like for neuroinclusive design.

Low-Cost Home Fixes For Overwhelm

Lyssia Katan 31:19

Based off of the design that you find so successful in that room, how can a listener recreate a sensory space in their home? And what are the elements that are really important? And what are the ones that are not so critical?

Dr. Kati Peditto 31:32

It doesn't have to be an extremely expensive intervention in your home, um, if you're homeschooling, right? Or if you're creating your own home office. The first, usually cheapest intervention is going to be acoustic material. If you have hardwood floors without a carpet, if you have walls and ceilings, um, especially high ceilings, put some acoustic material on your walls. Even just a painting or a canvas on the wall and a rug on the floor is going to dramatically dampen the reverberation in the space. And it might not even be something that you're fully conscious of. I don't think the average person, I hope the average person isn't super tuned in to the reverberation in their room. But once you dampen it, then you start to realize what was going on in the first place. It doesn't have to be loudness to be a sensory challenge. Reverberation or echo can also be really, really disruptive. So that's that's an easy, like low cost get a rug on Facebook Marketplace and put it on your hardwood floor. The second thing is visual input. Where are your sources of glare? Can you put a little bit of glazing on a window so that your workspace or your computer screen is not causing visual fatigue? Again, this is not just something that is beneficial for neurodivergent folks. It's just good for anyone who works in an office. This is something that's going to improve your cognitive function, regardless of whether you consider yourself neurodivergent or not. But it's often something that we don't take stock of until we sit and look at where glare is happening in our spaces. Temperature control, lighting control, those are things that you may or may not be able to adjust without, you know, expensive intervention. But you can still put task lighting on your office desk. I have a teeny tiny little space heater next to me. Small things that give you a sense of personal control, whether it's in your home or in your office space at your work, you know, your workplace, right? Um, you're often not going to be able to have personal control over the HVAC in your office, but there are little things that you can do to provide that sense of autonomy back. Again, a great example of an intervention that doesn't have to be expensive and benefits folks even if they don't identify as neurodivergent. Fluorescent lighting. I know we all joke about fluorescent lighting and overhead lighting, but it's real. I can promise you it's real. There is a subclinical subconscious flicker to fluorescent lighting. Individuals who are neurodivergent, often autistic individuals, are much more sensitive to that flicker. But even individuals with a temporary impairment, like a traumatic brain injury, a concussion, are very, very sensitive to that flicker. LEDs solve that problem. LEDs are really cheap. They're even cheap to replace your, you know, your overhead lighting, but it's also an easy fix if you put it in your task lighting as well. I know that sounds like an urban myth. It is not. Fluorescent lighting does have a flicker. You can see it if you uh take a video of an overhead light. And it impacts your visual system, even if you can't consciously process it.

Lyssia Katan 35:20

Going back real quick to the glare, I recently had Dr. Sally Augustine on the podcast, and she is I love her. She is incredible. She's just so good. But she said glare is something that makes us so irritable. Like, as humans, neurodivergent or not, you're a human, glare makes you just irritable. And I'm really glad you brought that point up because it just confirms how important this is and how there are studies behind this. So, I mean, anything you want to add there?

Dr. Kati Peditto 35:54

I first of all, I agree with anything Sally says.

Lyssia Katan 35:57

She's amazing.

Dr. Kati Peditto 35:58

Another like fantastic evidence-based no-nonsense about brain in the built environment. I completely agree. Glare in particular can be a challenge because it changes throughout the day. So you lose your sense of control. Even if you've managed to adjust your blinds at 9 a.m., then all of a sudden it might appear again around 1 p.m. And again, it can, if you're not paying attention to it, you may just grow fatigued and frustrated. But also, many folks in the design industry do recognize these things and are sensitive to things like glare and acoustic disruption. So how do we make sure that we are speculating and materials that are glare resistant? How do we make sure that when we have windows, because we need natural daylight and views to the outdoors, how do we make sure that we don't disrupt that while also ensuring we're not adding more cognitive cognitive drain or cognitive load to folks who are working in that space?

Lyssia Katan 37:06

Right, she said exactly that. Another fun balancing act. It is because, like at an office, you have these beautiful windows. Oftentimes, people who are working might bring down the shades, but then facilities people may be informed to bring them back up after the sun stops hitting the screens, but often they just stay that way.

Glare Control And Material Choices

Dr. Kati Peditto 37:24

Yep. I this is all maybe you're catching on to my thread here, that it's all a balancing act, but even especially in conversations about sustainability and resource use and facility management, often what we'll recommend are things like allow people to control their shades, allow people to control their lighting. And that might be at odds with the wider building policy or school policy to set a, to set circadian lighting and to set climate adaptive and sunlight adaptive shading. So we need to be thinking about individual-level interventions that still address those problems when there are building level regulations governing things like opening and closing windows. We really have to rely on our interior designers to understand the intersection of their material selection and how it impacts brain and behavior. Because if you think of a typical desk, right, it's going to be white and shiny, and it looks so new, and it looks like a beautiful, like tech innovative space. But as soon as light hits that desk, it is right up in your eyes or it's right on the screen. And couple that with white walls, and you've got a recipe for disaster, regardless of what the building policy is for the shading. So all of this, despite it being a balancing act, is something that can be totally achievable if you're just being intentional and thoughtful about the consequences of every design selection.

Lyssia Katan 39:09

Who are the people that need to be educated on this? Is it the clients who are creating the space, like the restaurant owners or the school, school owners, or is it the designers that are gonna say, I don't know who you're gonna have in this space, but I'm gonna make sure that this is a good space for neurodivergent individuals?

Who Must Learn Neuroinclusive Design

Dr. Kati Peditto 39:30

Oh, I hate to take the cop-out answer, but both. Okay. I've seen more and more RFPs requests for proposals come across my desk recently where clients are getting really savvy to this across all sectors. Workplace facilities owners and C-suite recognize that having a neuroinclusive environment, whether they use that word or not, but a high-performance environment is an environment that is taking into account the needs of their occupants' brains and behaviors. And they want to make their infrastructure investments accordingly. They want designers who know how to meet those needs. So, on one hand, I'm seeing clients get more knowledgeable about this. And I would love to continue seeing clients who are advocating on behalf of their occupants, knowing that this is just good investment. It is just good business to be thinking about these strategies. Again, whether you call it neuroinclusive or not, we're catching on to it. On the design side, we might not have clients who know what words to use or recognize that this is something that could really benefit them. As we mentioned earlier, then that is on us as designers and consultants and manufacturers to start the conversation, but meet them where they're at. Your Fortune 500 executive may not be ready to have the narrow inclusive design conversation, but they are certainly ready to have a conversation about how to get the most out of their investment and how your design strategy is linked to human outcomes. The best thing that a design team can do right now is make defensible decisions. No designer wants to show their, you know, take their SD package in front of a um in front of the client only to have them question why they made the decisions that they did. But every single design decision is a hypothesis. I chose this color because I think people will like it, feel better. I chose this material because it's biophilic and people's blood pressure will go down, right? Our designers make a hypothesis every single time they make a design decision. We need to be better at communicating that to our clients so they can see our train of thought. They can see that when we invest in better glazing on our windows, we're doing so because we have occupants in mind, neurodivergent or not. And you know it's less likely to be VE'd out, value engineered out? That glazing, when the executives and your client understands why it's there. So it's both. It's it's making sure our clients have the vocabulary to use and making sure that our designers are ready to meet them with human-centered evidence-based design strategy.

Lyssia Katan 42:53

Right. Especially when their design decisions are questioned and they're put on the line like this might be a budget constraint. Being able to, as a designer, actually defend your choices and say, no, there's a reason why I picked the matte tile over the shiny porcelain.

Targeted Universalism And Invisible Needs

Dr. Kati Peditto 43:10

You know, they're exactly. Yes. This is all I hate to boil it down to this, but I often hear that time and cost is a barrier to doing neuroinclusive work. And it's not. It's just better business to do it this way, whether you call it that or not.

Lyssia Katan 43:28

So, besides for individuals that are neurodivergent, how much of this design helps individuals with PTSD, for example, or individuals with all kinds of things that are just not recognized by the world at large? And what kinds of individuals can benefit from this?

Dr. Kati Peditto 43:48

I love the phrase everyone is temporarily abled. At some point in everyone's life, you will become disabled in one. One way or another. It could be a chronic physical illness, it could be mental and behavioral health related, it could be as temporary as a few weeks with a broken bone, or it could be the result of a traumatic brain injury, it could be the result of natural aging. Everyone becomes disabled by the built environment at some point in their life. So by making more intentional, holistic decisions about the intersection of our brains and the built environment, we're creating a more resilient built environment, right? We are designing for all possible abilities and disabilities in space. I often, when I talk about neuroinclusive design, the idea of universal design comes up. That if we are meeting the needs of neurodivergent folks, then that's just good best practice. That should be good for everybody. And for the most part, it is. If we're being more conscientious about the sensory and cognitive load that we're placing on people as they go about their day, that's just good design. But there is an approach called targeted universalism that goes one step further and suggests that there are populations for which we may need targeted intervention and targeted design strategy to meet their needs and nobody else's. And that is okay. The curb cut effect is wonderful, right? When we design something that does elevate the experience for everybody, regardless of who it was intended for. But there are also certain individuals and certain occupant populations who need a specific design strategy. Individuals with PTSD, for example, right? We might actually be creating a trauma-informed space that other people going into the facility don't need and don't need to interact with, and it doesn't benefit their experience. But by just targeting this particularly vulnerable group of people, we have made a tangible, measurable difference in outcomes for people in this space.

Lyssia Katan 46:22

Especially when it's something you can't see. And I love that you mentioned that because I actually experienced this firsthand. About two years ago, I ruptured my Achilles and I had to have surgery, and I was on a bike, like one of those scooters. So trendy, like, let me tell you. But I've never like needed to be aware of ADA compliance. And funny enough, I had a friend who ruptured her Achilles like three days after me, totally unrelated, two different sports. But we decided to go to coffee because we were just both, you know, in scooters, which is the crazy, craziest thing to think about. And we had to find specifically coffee shops that do have like a little ramp. And we ended up at a coffee shop that you had to go all the way around the hotel and through it because the main entrance was not ADA compliant. And these are the things that you never realize until you have to realize. You're abled until you're not. And then you're like, wait a second, there's this whole group of people that just can't access these places, and even more so outside of the States. I I ended up going to uh I was traveling a you know a year after, and in Europe, no ADA compliance whatsoever. So this is like a firsthand I was able to experience this and see, wait a second, like so many of these places are just not welcoming to anyone who's outside of the norm, even slightly or even just technically.

Dr. Kati Peditto 47:55

And everyone at some point in their lives will have that experience. But you're right, it it depends even on whether you're in a historic area. It depends on what state you're in and what they designate to be their ADA compliance. Is it just baseline or are they requiring more? And it's it's not something that I think can be taught in a simulation. Just putting a blindfold on someone and asking them to navigate a space or putting them in a wheelchair for 30 minutes and asking them to experience ADA compliance or lack thereof, it doesn't achieve the very real lived experience of individuals who have no alternative in that moment. And yet at some point, every single person will experience that.

Advocacy That Speeds Up Inclusion

Lyssia Katan 48:45

And they don't think about it until they have to. And suddenly they're like, hasn't anybody ever thought of this? But slowly, I think people are understanding, but it's it's moving at a glacial pace. So how can we make this move faster? What are some things that people listening, anyone listening can do immediately, besides for just in their home in general, in the world?

Dr. Kati Peditto 49:12

We all have a responsibility to be advocates, both designers and people who do not think they're designers at all can still advocate for a more inclusive built environment. Local planning boards are often the ones that are making the decisions about compliance and adjacencies. And those are often the best places to be heard if you need to make a difference in your local community. Advocating in legislature, because ADA compliance comes up all the time. And efforts to either make it easier to avoid ADA compliance or efforts to really strengthen ADA, which we really consider to be like the worst you could do is comply with ADA. Um, I'd encourage folks, regardless of whether you've had a disabling experience in the built environment yet, you will. So become an advocate right now to see your neighborhood and your city, your town become a place where individuals can age in place and experience all types of brain and behavior in one place. That is a thriving community. That's something we should all strive for. As designers who have the opportunity to actually implement design strategy, I we talked about a couple of broader strategies already, like think about your acoustics, think about your visual simulation, right? But more importantly, think about at each stage of the design process how you are getting feedback from individuals, from a wide range of individuals who will use this space. It is very easy to find neurodivergent folks and disabled folks who want to give feedback. And that is on the design team to ensure that you are at every stage getting feedback and iterating on it. That's something that every design team is capable of doing. And in fact, it does not cost more money or slow the project down because ultimately you're going to have fewer revisions to make. If you've looked at your mock-up right with an occupant group, you're going to have fewer revisions once you get to the client desk, right? So this is actually, again, a valuable investment. And then on the client side, if you are listening and you are a facilities manager, you know that there might be an RFP that you're issuing anytime soon, it's worth putting some of this language in the RFP so that you can see the capabilities of firms and designers in response to some of the things that you might be looking for. This is a way to encourage our industry to start learning more and being better stewards. If you want it in your contract, that's gonna force people to learn it and embody it and do it better.

Lyssia Katan 52:34

And it's gonna encourage so much more. The second it's normalized or more common, more places are going to be seeking that out in their designs, more designers, more arguments.

Dr. Kati Peditto 52:45

Absolutely. Yeah.

ADHD Focus Tools And Body Doubling

Lyssia Katan 52:46

So if you are neurodivergent or not, if you are feeling, because you mentioned ADHD, and I know plenty of people with ADHD, people that I love so much, and feel like sometimes I'm walking around closing cupboards after them or closing drawers, or you know, just the normal, the normal part, right? If someone is feeling constantly distracted or overstimulated at home, what's one place that you would suggest they start paying attention to? And how can they make their lives easier and the lives of the people around them?

Dr. Kati Peditto 53:16

If you are someone with the privilege of working from home and having a space to make into a home office, that would be my first priority. Designating a space for work, I don't think that's a particularly novel idea, but it is the first and best line of defense against other distractions at home. We know that this inequitably affects women who are mothers, who, whether they have a child at home or not, are often attending to many other things in the household during the course of the workday. So having a designated space, even if it's not a room with a door, just some designated space in the house that is only for work, can be really, really powerful. Again, particularly potent for women with children, but also important if you have a child who comes home and needs a space for homework.

Lyssia Katan 54:14

You can support your children if they do have ADHD and give them a space that's more suited for their success.

Dr. Kati Peditto 54:20

Yeah, absolutely. Again, it doesn't have to be a room with a door, but even if you are designating part of your kitchen or your dining area or somewhere that is not your bedroom or places that you have housework to regularly do, being able to put that both out of visual sight and auditory sight, as it were, um, that is going to be the best thing you can do for your executive function. Alternatively, work outside of the house. My best work is done at Panera Bread, where I've got food if I need it, but I also have a level of kind of hustle and bustle that helps for helps with executive function. Individuals with ADHD naturally have executive dysfunction or differences in how our executive function works. Often we need more stimulation in order to get that executive function like up and running and moving. And that for me comes in the form of just like a couple people moving around. I really feel like I'm in a space where I am going to do work. Um, so on days when even my home office isn't cutting it, Panera Bread Company.

Lyssia Katan 55:40

Shout out Panera Bread. We love it. I know, I know.

Dr. Kati Peditto 55:42

If anyone wants to, you know, send me a gift card to Panera Bread Company. Um, no, but in like truly, if you do not have a space in your house that feels like it meets your executive function needs, consider one of the third places in your community where other people go to work. There is a known phenomena in the ADHD community called body doubling, which is not as scary as it sounds, but the idea that you get more work done when you see someone mirroring your activity. So if you are both sitting there on your computers, you are both more likely to be getting work done. Um, and that doesn't even necessarily have to be someone that you know. It could literally be other people at the local coffee shop who are all there to get a little bit of work done. You get that body doubling effect even from strangers.

Lyssia Katan 56:37

I've seen this, I've spoken about body doubling before, and the impact that it has on individuals with ADHD night and day, just like it keeps them on track.

Dr. Kati Peditto 56:51

I am a huge fan of body doubling. I have a handful of colleagues who work in, you know, in the Denver Boulder area where I am, and every once in a while we'll have to have like we'll have to have a sit down and really just crank things out. Because there are days when when my home office is not cutting it.

Unpredictable Noise And Touch Sensitivity

Lyssia Katan 57:09

Are there some common stimulators or common stim stimulants? Is that the right word? That people can watch out for in their homes or in their spaces that like are instant, like, this is not, this is not good. This is not gonna, you know, this is going to negatively impact someone with neurodivergence or anyone, really.

Dr. Kati Peditto 57:35

Yeah. Well, one of the things I am often thinking of in a residential space or any other space really is how much stimulation is predictable versus unpredictable and unwanted. We use the definition of noise, that noise is unwanted sound. Sound is actually okay. Sound happens all the time, but noise is unpredictable and unwanted. So if you live next to a train route, for example, and you are constantly getting interruptions at random intervals because the train is coming through and you can hear the horn coming, right? That is going to be far, far, far more disruptive for your cognitive function than if you every day at 9 a.m. the train went by and you knew it was coming, and that's what happened. But this the same thing happens in your home too. Do you have a washer dryer that has a 20-minute chime on the side? I love this chime.

Lyssia Katan 58:49

Don't go over my car.

Dr. Kati Peditto 58:50

I know. I could I could do the chime by heart now. It's me too.

Lyssia Katan 58:53

So great.

Dr. Kati Peditto 58:55

But that's the type of thing that, especially if you have ADHD and you are more prone to disruption and inability to get back on track once you've been disrupted. You want to minimize even what seems benign, like the washer going off, right? You want to minimize as many of those unpredictable, unroutine sounds as possible. It happens less frequently with like visual stimulation. It would be rarer for us to have something unpredictable there. Auditory unpredictability can be really, really triggering.

Lyssia Katan 59:33

Noted.

Dr. Kati Peditto 59:33

So again, an easy thing to do, right? Like mute your mute your mute your washer dryer.

Lyssia Katan 59:39

Right.

Dr. Kati Peditto 59:39

Turn down the volume on your microwave.

Lyssia Katan 59:41

Like things that are just not predictable, that you don't know when it's gonna go off.

Dr. Kati Peditto 59:47

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um trying to think of other triggers that someone might encounter in their home.

Lyssia Katan 59:56

Triggers. That was the word. What about fabrics? Are there fabrics that are triggers?

Dr. Kati Peditto 1:00:01

If I was designing a brand new home and I knew that the occupants would be neurodivergent, whether it was a neurodivergent adult or a kid, I would be thinking really conscientiously about their haptic experience, what they're touching regularly. Um, so that that would be fabric. That would be even things like flooring and tile, like how gritty does it feel. That might be something that one individual is extremely sensitive to and someone else could care less and would never notice it. But again, targeted universalism, we are designing for the person who is going to notice it. Because if it doesn't matter to someone else, then we do want to still elevate the experience for the most sensitive group. For both young people and adults, we want to be conscientious of the ability to move and play throughout the day. That's something that we really reserve for like children with ADHD and neurodivergent children. You'll see the swings and the crash pads and all of these like cool, fun interventions for kiddos who need more of that vestibular input, that that body input. That's also true of adults, though, as well. And we just don't have as many cool, fun things for that. So our fabric and finishing choices can play a role there too, as an opportunity for more bodily feedback. I'm currently sitting in a chair that allows me to move in many, many different ways. I'm sitting cross-legged over the course of this interview. My legs have been like to the side and in the air. It's not quite as fun as having a, you know, a sensory swing in my office, but there are, again, relatively inexpensive interventions that even adults can access to ensure that you're getting that vestibular input and sensory choice in your own residence.

Lyssia Katan 1:02:12

I've seen that chair online, actually.

Dr. Kati Peditto 1:02:13

And I've always so good. It's my I it took me so long to decide to finally buy it, and I shouldn't have waited this long. It's so good. I love it. Yes.

Lyssia Katan 1:02:25

No, like I mean, we're not sponsored by the chair, but go take it out.

Dr. Kati Peditto 1:02:29

I'm not gonna even tell you the name of who makes this, um, but a good example of something that I think has often been overlooked as like a kid issue that really is an adult consideration as well.

Lyssia Katan 1:02:44

Right. I've seen people on even the bouncy chairs, like the large round ones. And it just even like we forget. Sometimes we get past the age where it's appropriate to be a child, and we forget, like, we have bodies, we need to move, we need to like so many times we're stuck, especially today, in front of our computers for so long. And then we get up and we're feeling tense. Like that's also a factor, what neurodivergent are not like art? We have bodies, we need to move them, and getting out that energy is really critical, especially during the work day.

The Future Of Engagement And Evaluation

Dr. Kati Peditto 1:03:17

Yeah, absolutely.

Lyssia Katan 1:03:18

So, Dr. Pedito, when you think about the future of design and health, uh, what do you hope shifts in how we design for real human needs?

Dr. Kati Peditto 1:03:28

I hope that we in 10 years are at a point where participant engagement and post-occupancy evaluations are not an ad service where we're not expecting to pay additional money or have additional time built into a contract, that it's just part of our way of doing business. That the people who are going to use a space are consulted as experts on what their space should be like. Um, and that that's not a like specialty thing that a designer is offering. That is just the standard way of doing business. And that ultimately, once we provide a space, that it's standard practice to go back in six, 12, 18 months later to figure out what worked and what didn't, so that our clients get the most out of their investment. This is true, again, not just of like a big Fortune 500 workplace project, but even a res a smaller residential product project. If it's not working for you, we should have the flexibility to change it, to get the most out of our investment and to elevate the human experience for all of our occupants. I think we're getting there, but we're not quite there yet.

Core Takeaway And Closing

Lyssia Katan 1:04:51

We'll get there soon. If a listener was to take one thing from this entire conversation, what would you want it to be?

Dr. Kati Peditto 1:05:00

Neuroinclusive design is not just sensory rooms or sensory design. There is a lot more to the neurodivergent experience than just the sensory experience.

Lyssia Katan 1:05:11

Dr. Perdito, I could speak to you all day. I've learned so much.

Dr. Kati Peditto 1:05:14

I know, I had so much fun.

Lyssia Katan 1:05:16

I truly, and I've learned so much, and I really think our listeners will learn a lot because this is not something that's often spoken about. And I'm so glad that you're out here speaking about it and for you to be on the show so that we can really get it out to a wider audience. But thank you for everything you're doing. I know that it's making changes in the lives of people who may never even know that you're the one that's really responsible for helping push it. So thank you for being on the show and thank you for doing what you do.

Dr. Kati Peditto 1:05:43

The flip side of the coin, thank you for creating a platform for individuals to think a little bit more intentionally and holistically about how design impacts humans and human experience.

Lyssia Katan 1:05:56

I'm happy to be doing it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Much for spending this time with me on Room2think. If you enjoyed this episode, feel free to follow the show, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who you think would really appreciate a more thoughtful approach to their space. You can find more Design Meets Psychology insights on social, in our community, and definitely in upcoming episodes so you can build a better life by design. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you next time.