Using LEGO® Serious Play® as a public engagement tool: How autistic people believe digital technology can support them in the workplace.
Autistic individuals bring unique strengths, but often face distinct challenges in the workplace. To explore how digital technologies can support them to access and thrive in employment, we hosted a creative workshop for autistic students and trialled the use of LEGO® Serious Play® to encourage communication and generate innovative ideas.
A neurodiverse workforce presents many benefits to employers due to autistic people’s differences in thinking styles and high attention to detail, but differences in social communication and sensory needs mean that many employers struggle to effectively hire and retain autistic employees. In January 2024 the Centre for People-Led Digitisation (P-LD) and the Centre for Applied Autism Research (CAAR) asked the autistic community for their suggestions on how digital technologies could make workplaces more accessible. It was decided to use LEGO® Serious Play® when engaging with the community as it encourages creative solutions and articulation of complex ideas.
LEGO® Serious Play® is a workshop-styled toolkit that has frequently been used to develop people’s skills and business performance. The workshop operates on asking questions such as “How can digital technology improve employment opportunities for autistic individuals?”, and attendees must use the available bricks to build an answer to the question. Each attendee then takes turns to describe their creation and how it answers the question. Many theories of autism would claim this workshop style would be more difficult for autistic people due to reliance on abstract, creative thinking, and having to assign meaning to LEGO® bricks, but the findings showed that the LEGO® medium greatly assisted with navigating communication barriers, and that the structure of the event painted clear social rules and explicit instructions to minimise distress.
When attendees were presenting their answers, facilitators noted that attendees were able to produce rich information and required minimal prompting to discuss their ideas in detail. When asked to design their own digital technologies, the attendees proposed novel and sophisticated solutions to their perceived employment barriers, including software programmes to assist with task prioritisation, programmes to minimise manager support by helping with decision making and access to information, and programmes to support requesting reasonable adjustments and communicating ideas effectively to other employees and managers.
Recommendations
An effective method of successfully integrating autistic and other neurodivergent employees into the workforce is to ask them how employers can support them. LEGO® Serious Play® is a tool that can facilitate employers to discuss accommodations with their employees to better gain insights into the challenges that their autistic employees face, how they can be addressed, and how to maximise their unique benefits as employees.
The findings from this workshop will help to build our understanding of how digital technologies can support neuro-inclusive workplaces.
Author’s profile
George Bentley is undertaking a PhD looking into the evolving issue of burnout. This will include how various technologies can be integrated into workplaces to reduce effects of digital and occupational burnout. He will also be seeking to refine ways of measure of burnout to better understand how to support people of various backgrounds experiencing digital burnout, such as the neurodiverse community.
If you would like further information on this research please email: p-ld@bath.ac.uk
