TheNDBourhood

Most apps marketed at neurodivergent adults are either gamified to oblivion or built by people without lived experience. They're loud, they patronise, they assume the user has the executive function to maintain a streak — which is precisely the executive function the user came looking for help with.

The brief was the opposite: a calm, low-stim, judgement-free toolkit that respects how ADHD, autism, and chronic fatigue actually feel from the inside. Multilingual from day one (EN/PT), private by default, no streak shaming, no notifications begging for re-engagement. A neighbourhood — *the* ND-bourhood — rather than a product.

We started with five primitives: Pomodoro that adapts to time-blindness, Spoon-Theory tracking for energy budgeting, sensory profiles to capture overload triggers, self-screening checklists for adults late-realising they might be neurodivergent, and a focus-room mode for body-doubling.

Three commitments shaped every architectural decision. **Privacy-first**: nothing leaves the device unless the user explicitly consents to a sync account. The default is local-only persistence, and even with sync turned on, screening answers are stored encrypted with keys the server never sees. **Accessibility-first**: WCAG 2.2 AA across the whole product; reduced-motion respected at the OS level; every interactive element keyboard-navigable; every colour pairing tested against real low-vision users. **Language-first**: EN and PT are equal citizens, not 'translation as afterthought'. Every string lives in a typed translation file; PT-PT idioms (not PT-BR) reviewed by community members.

On the design side, the calibration was 'calm dashboard, not casino'. Single accent colour, generous whitespace, large hit targets, readable type at 16-18px body, no infinite scroll. The hardest call was rejecting gamification — no streaks, no points, no badges — because the audience had told us repeatedly that streak loss is more demotivating than no streak at all.

Testing was done with a panel of seven neurodivergent adults across four feedback rounds before launch. Their notes shaped the final product more than any analytics dashboard could.

The stack is intentionally boring: Next.js App Router for speed and SEO on the public surface, IndexedDB (via Dexie) for local-first persistence on each tool, an opt-in Postgres-backed sync layer that only activates if the user creates an account, and Tailwind for the UI tokens.

The interesting work was in the tool primitives. The ADHD timer accommodates time-blindness with a visual fluid metaphor (a glass that drains rather than a digital countdown), respects 'just five more minutes' the way real ADHD brains do (extending without judgement), and pauses gracefully when sensors detect the user has switched apps — instead of beeping at them.

The Spoon-Theory tracker captures daily energy with a slider and tagged context (sleep, stress, sensory load), then projects realistic capacity against to-dos. Over time it builds a personal pattern map without ever requiring a label or a diagnosis.

Screening tools cite their underlying instruments (ASRS-v1.1 for ADHD, AQ-10 for autistic traits) clearly and frame outcomes as 'screen positive — consider professional follow-up' rather than 'you have'.