Burnout by Design: How Digital Systems Overburden Neurodivergent Students in Higher Education

Digital systems play a critical role in higher education, supporting student learning, communication, and administrative tasks. However, they are often designed with neurotypical users as the default, inadvertently creating barriers for a neurodiverse student body. By conducting semi-structured interviews with 11 neurodivergent students at a British university, we aimed to identify how neurodivergent students perceive their experiences of neurodivergence within academia, how these students experiences interact with these systems to affect academic performance and emotional wellbeing, and what strategies these students use to manage their academic and personal challenges. Our findings document the additional invisible work undertaken by neurodivergent students due to system designs exacerbating neurodivergent symptoms, imposing excessive user workload, and undermining both emotional wellbeing and academic success. We suggest solutions to reduce this invisible access work.