Designing For Different Minds
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The Same Experience Isn’t Experienced The Same Way By Everyone.
A workflow can work.
A product can function.
A system can be live.
A process can reach the intended outcome.
But none of those things tells us how much people had to do to make the experience work for them.
Designing for Different Minds looks at what an environment is asking different people to do while they are trying to get something done.
The Experience Is Part of the System.
Every workplace, workflow, product, service, platform or learning experience places demands on people.
The useful questions include:
What do people need to remember?
What do they need to interpret or work out for themselves?
Is important information visible when they need it?
Do they know what happens next?
Can they recover after interruption?
Can they recognise when something is complete?
Where does uncertainty or inconsistency appear?
Different people can experience those same demands very differently.
That can tell us something important about the conditions created by the environment, rather than simply about the people experiencing it.
What Is the Experience Asking People to Carry?
Designing for Different Minds focuses on observable demands.
It doesn’t begin by diagnosing the person or assuming that everyone with a particular characteristic will experience something in the same way.
Instead, NDPP looks at the experience itself.
What is it asking people to work out, retain, reconstruct or resolve for themselves?
That question can reveal demands that aren’t obvious from whether a process was completed, a system was adopted or an outcome was achieved.
It Can Be Used Before Something Exists.
Designing for Different Minds isn’t only a way of examining something that has already become difficult.
It can also be used to challenge a proposed product, service, system, workflow or organisational change.
Before something is built or changed, we can ask:
What will people need to understand or remember?
What will they need to work out for themselves?
Where could context be lost?
Will next steps, information and ownership be visible?
What unnecessary demands could the proposed design create?
The aim is not to predict every possible user experience.
It is to identify important questions and assumptions before they become part of the design.
It Can Help Understand Something That Already Exists.
Sometimes different experiences are already visible, but the organisation doesn’t sufficiently understand what is creating them.
NDPP can use Designing for Different Minds to examine the demands created by the work and where unnecessary difficulty may be occurring.
Sometimes the organisation already has strong evidence through user research, employee experience, accessibility work, operational evidence or previous findings.
In that case, we don’t need to repeat work that has already produced credible understanding.
We start with what is already known.
It Can Shape What Needs to Change.
Once there is sufficient understanding, Designing for Different Minds can help translate evidence into practical requirements.
Depending on what the evidence shows, a better condition might involve:
clearer sequencing
greater consistency
more visible information or next actions
better support for returning after interruption
clearer completion cues
less unnecessary interpretation
information available at the point it is needed
greater user control
These are possibilities, not a checklist.
What needs to change should follow from the evidence.
NDPP can help turn that understanding into requirements, design principles and decision criteria, then work alongside the specialists responsible for designing or implementing the eventual change.
It Isn’t About Designing for One Type of Mind.
Designing for Different Minds has an important relationship with neurodiversity, but it isn’t limited to neurodiversity.
The approach doesn’t assume there is one standard user and a separate group who need a different version.
It asks what demands the environment creates, where different people may experience those demands differently and what the evidence tells us should become easier.
The aim isn’t to design for one type of mind.
It’s to create better conditions in which more people can work, use, learn or participate without unnecessary demands being designed into the experience.
From Workflows to Products, Systems and Change.
Designing for Different Minds can inform NDPP work around:
work and workflows
products and services
digital platforms and systems
AI and automation
learning and information
workplace and organisational change
neurodiversity at work
It can be used to understand something that exists, challenge something being proposed, shape requirements from existing evidence or review what happens after implementation.
It is an approach NDPP brings to the work where it is relevant, not a predetermined solution, service or route every organisation has to go through.
Better Conditions Should Reduce What People Have to Carry.
The purpose isn’t simply to make something look clearer or feel easier.
It is to understand what the experience currently requires from people and what should genuinely become different.
What should people no longer need to remember?
What should they no longer need to reconstruct?
What should become visible?
What should become more reliable?
And after change:
Has the experience actually become easier to navigate, or has the demand simply moved?
Start With the Experience.
You might already know that different people are experiencing the same system, process or workplace very differently.
You might have evidence and need help deciding what should change.
Or you might be designing something new and want to challenge the demands it could create before those demands become embedded.
You don’t need to know how Designing for Different Minds should be applied before getting in touch.
Start with what you’re trying to understand, design or improve.