
Twitter Spaces’ Sensory Guide & Social Narrative
Summary
We designed and evaluated a sensory guide and social narrative to support neurodivergent users in auditory social media environments.
This work was published in the Twitter Help Center, a highly-trafficked site that has been viewed over 1.8 million times since we launched. The work was also presented at ASSETS 2021.
→ Go to Sensory Guide & Social Narrative
Role
Lead accessibility designer and researcher
This is really cool, I’m very aware that how I interact with social media is unique to my access needs as a neurodivergent person, yet nowhere seems to acknowledge this, until now!!
@CatherineRwork
1 approval point for Twitter for this accessibility move. As a #neurodiverse person that is extremely sensory sensitive, it’s a huge bonus to see that a guide to Twitter spaces was written by & for neurodiverse people. The tips are fantastic & super helpful FYI.
@rosiemay_r
Publication
Motivation
Problem
Neurodivergent users lack support in social media environments, where sensory stimuli and social contexts can be complex and uncertain.
Objectives
- Determine whether neurodivergent users want sensory guides and social narratives adapted for social media
- Find out if users find them helpful in setting expectations for social media interaction
Design Process
We started with a neurodiverse team, some identifying as neurodivergent, others as neurotypical.
Sensory Guide
- We defined primary steps in the user journey, like un-muting or leaving
- The columns listed sensory input categories
- 3 categories were new, not seen in classroom/museum sensory guides: motion level, imagery level, information level
Social Narrative
- We used classroom/museum guidelines to design a social narrative specifically adapted for social media environments
- Over 4 iterations, we reduced the 77 steps in the user journey to the 19 focused on social context
- Each step described how Twitter Spaces might feel
Figma Prototype


Usability Testing
Recruiting
We sent a screener survey to ∼20,000 individuals to find current iOS Twitter users who self-identifed as neurodivergent. We received about 200 responses, selecting 9 neurodivergent participants (2 non- binary, 3 female, 3 male; ages 26-55).
Procedure
We provided informed consent before conducting 60-minute remote, semi-structured interviews using Google Meet. We recorded audio and video, transcribed them, and stored the data on a secure cloud server. We then used tasks and thinking aloud.
Tasks
- Read the social narrative and describe what information you think you can find
- Try to understand the social narrative and describe what you think you can do with it
- Tour the sensory guide and describe what you are finding
- Describe the sensory guide categories and what you think they mean
- Use the guide to tell me how you think captions affect a space and what it might feel like to join as a listener or a host
Key Questions
- What do you think you can do with the sensory guide?
- Will you describe any areas of the social narrative that you had questions about?
- We asked participants how likely they would be to use the tools with a 10-point Likert scale: 1 being not likely and 10 being very likely
Findings
Participants were “likely” to use the sensory guide and social narrative
- We used a 10-point Likert scale, 1 being “not likely” and 10 being “very likely” to use the two tools
- Participants reported a median score of 8 and a mean of 8.1 for the sensory guide and a median score of 9.5 and mean of 8.25 for the social narrative
The sensory guide and social narrative set expectations for the participants
Sensory Guide
The majority of participants {P2, P3, P5, P6, P7, P8} were able to describe how it set expectations for an unfamiliar feature.
P7: “If something was a high trigger point, I would check it [the sensory guide] out and I would not go there.”
(Race 2021, 3)
P2: “I would use all of the descriptions of the sound levels. For me, that’s really helpful. I don’t like loud sounds.”
(Race 2021, 3)
Social Narrative
Most participants {P1, P2, P4, P5, P6, P7} could explain its effectiveness within social contexts
P5: “It set rules” and it helped them understand “What’s my place in this space?”
(Race 2021, 3)
P6: “Especially for someone who has a little bit of social anxiety, it makes it [Spaces] more understanding [sic]. It calms my nerves as far as what to expect.”
(Race 2021, 3)
Final Designs
Guidelines
Social Media Sensory Guide
- Include sensory stimuli levels for sound, motion, image density, and information
- Set sensory stimuli levels by comparing them to the baseline of when a computing device is turned off
- Consider how additional modes, like closed captions, might affect sensory stimuli levels
Social Media Social Narrative
- Identify your audience and focusing on their experience
- Write the narrative in the first person
- Identify sensory experiences and points of decision-making
- Show how to enter and exit an experience
- Provide information about how to handle harmful or challenging social situations such as muting, blocking, reporting, etc.
- Keep the narrative short, positive, and direct