Neurodivergence + Slack Accessibility

Our contextual inquiry began with the intention of observing how neurodivergent users had tailored Slack to best support their use of the platform. However, when we conducted our first interview, I had a realization while speaking with the participant— many users are unaware of Slack's full range of customization options. This insight led us to pivot our approach. Instead observing users’ current settings, we instead guided each participant through all customizable settings, the preferences setting, within Slack. I asked them to talk through each section and their motivations for each change they would make. This shift not only highlighted the issue of discoverability but also allowed us to witness users tailor their settings in real-time.

This pivot became a key point of discovery. I was able to pinpoint crucial design flaws, particularly surrounding the discoverability of accessibility features. Watching users interact with the settings brought to the forefront the need for a more intuitive design that could be easily navigated by all users, regardless of neurodiversity. Additionally, users walked us through their typical workflow on Slack as well as any customizations they had done outside of the settings. By utilizing the same foundations of qualitative coding from the user interview method, the contextual inquiry revealed several insights that directly correlated to potential design implementations:

Next, we conducted a comparative analysis by examining the user experience and feature sets across Slack and two other major communication platforms: Discord and Microsoft Teams. We chose these two platforms based on our their relevance from our initial market research as well as the experiences communicated by our user interview participants. The focus of this comparative analysis was to understand how neurodivergent users interact with these platforms, in comparison to Slack, and how their experiences could be improved.

To assess each platform's performance, we developed a checklist addressing various dimensions of interest such as onboarding experience, degree of customization, visual and textual overload, and ease of workflow integration. This allowed for a structured and quantifiable approach to compare features that are critical to the user experience of neurodivergent individuals.

The analysis revealed that Slack has a significant edge in customization, yet this advantage is underutilized due to cognitive overload during the onboarding process. Discord stood out in its organizational structure, hinting at UI enhancements that could be adopted by Slack. Microsoft Teams was acknowledged for its collaborative features, though it could benefit from reduced textual complexity. We created a chart ranking the platforms on the specified elements of analysis for quick visual comparison and ease of interpretation. Below is the checklist and chart:

In order to gain in-depth knowledge of practical insights on Slack’s current design motivations and accessibility considerations, we arranged interviews with Maripaz Pacheco, an associate User Researcher at Slack, and Hannah Glazebrook, our mentor and accessibility expert at Ceridian. The goals of these interviews was to provide deeper, expert insights to inform our future design decisions from the perspective of accessibility and Slack’s standards. I sought to answer the following questions through these interviews:

Speaking to Maripaz allowed us to learn firsthand the issues that Slack users face, as recognized by Slack's UX team. Her insights were grounded in the company's awareness of user challenges, offering us insight into the concerns that Slack is currently aware of. She elaborated on the diverse user research methods employed by Slack, including usability testing, user interviews, and diary studies, that we then evaluated to integrate into our research process.
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Hannah advised on measures to develop better accessibility in digital design by grounding us in the principles of WCAG and demonstrating the use of tools like WAVE, Microsoft Accessibility Insight, IBM Equal Access, and Google Lighthouse for initial assessments. Additionally, Hannah pointed out that while automated tools provide a significant starting point, they have limitations and a tendency to focus mainly on visual and keyboard navigation aspects. After this interview, we initially chose accessibility testing as one of our research methods. We utilized multiple accessibility scanners to assess Slack's interface but the results revealed only a few errors and warnings, primarily highlighting subtle visual issues rather than significant accessibility problems. This process revealed important visual accessibility considerations but ultimately was used as supplementary research rather than a main method.

Recognizing the limitations of automated web scanners and tools in evaluating Slack's accessibility, we conducted comprehensive secondary research initiative as our final research method at this state. Our goal was to answer our initial research questions of understanding neurodivergent users experiences on Slack, to evaluate Slack's existing accessibility initiatives, and to establish robust design guidelines that would cater to neurodivergent inclusivity.
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In this research, we aimed to align our design strategy with actual user needs and Slack's own accessibility framework. By immersing ourselves in Slack’s internal forums and user feedback channels as well as performing accessibility tests, we synthesized the following information:

Additionally, by expanding our knowledge across previous research methods in combination with this secondary research, we gained a profound understand of lived experiences of neurodivergence. We acknowledge that these experience can differ widely based on an individual’s specific condition and its severity. The following themes aim to illustrate underlying shared challenges and strengths across neurodivergence experiences: