Assistive Technology for users with ADHD
About
As a part of my master’s thesis in Interaction design, I studied how digital artifacts can help users with ADHD cope with excessive mobile phone usage. The study was done over the span of two months and resulted in a prototype showcasing the learnings. This project resulted in not only a prototype and knowledge of the user group, but in the development research methods within UX and interaction design.
Research
An important focus of this aspect was the user research, which helped inspire the solution. The user group was involved throughout a lot of the project, including the research, design, prototyping and testing to ensure a solution tailored to the group. This was a big motivation for the project as users with ADHD tend to often be excluded from HCI research.
The user research consisted of a literature review, comparison of existing technology, interviews as well as technological probes to gain user data. Since the issue of excessive scrolling often is situational, the probes had to be adapted in order to gain user data without disrupting the user’s daily behavior. This method of user research helped gain an insight into the user’s behaviors and together with the follow-up interview gave deeper insights.
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Users interviewed
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UX research methods
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Prototype tests
Double diamond
Prototype
The prototyping was made using various tools, including Wizard of oz as well as Figma prototypes that were developed from paper sketches. As it was not clear what type of prototype would be suitable, these tools helped keep the solutions open.
The final design allows the user to set a time they can spend on social media. When the time is up the user is prompted to reply to certain questions in order for the system to offer guidance. As there can be different reasons for a user to scroll social media, it was important to adapt to a neurodivergent user group and create a prototype that isn’t punitive but rather supportive. This is why the prompt examples in the prototype offer a variety of ways to help the user.
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