Refocus.io GR1

Observations and Interviews

Social Worker/Guidance Counselor

• Works with college age students in a private practice. Also runs a K-12 guidance department at a mid size school.*
• Social Involvement of others is important to improving attention*
• People with ADHD understand they have a problem. A common behavior is installing self help software and then not using it/uninstalling it.*
• Tedious and boring material is so unappealing in relationship with easy access engagement and stimulation*
• Precipitous drop in the grades of ADHD kids who are given iPads in the classroom*
• Reward systems have proven effective where stimulation is given in exchange for accomplishment*

MIT Course 16 Senior

• Long unordered lists get ignored, while lists with a clear hierarchy of titles or ideas are very attractive.*
• Graphics and colors get noticed first, things that are familiar or expected or easier to look at and more appealing*
• Low tolerance for sites that take more than a few seconds to understand*
• Chunking improves ability to scan/comprehend*
• It is important to keep track of useful information to pull up and see all together (e.x. Summaries)*

Dina Course 9 Junior

• Has difficulty starting tasks, doesn’t know what approach to take*
• Hyperfocuses on specific things. This tends to happen with hands-on work*
• Low capacity for working memory: losing thread in the middle of a paragraph/long questions.*
• Breaks information into parts to deal with it. Switches between topics and tasks to keep interested. Sets goals to accomplish before starting to work, and writes them down.*
• Plans rigid time blocks in which to do activities*

User Analysis/Groups

From our observations and interviews, we identified two broad user groups: students with ADHD, as well as their parents, friends, teachers or other interested parties.

Students with ADHD

ADHD can be categorized into three primary categories: Hyperactive/Impulsive, Inattentive and a combination of both.

Hyperactive/Impulsive ADHD: This includes students that are hyperactive/impulsive as they browse the internet i.e. they digress from the task at hand, switch topics and tabs constantly.
Inattentive ADHD: People with inattentive ADHD tend to zone out of the task at hand, especially when a lot of information is presented to them all at once. They find it difficult to prioritize and organize information.
The lines between these two strains tend to blur, so we categorized users into those with severe and mild ADHD.

Severe ADHD: This includes students that have severe ADHD i.e. they have been or are on medication, and their condition is disruptive. For these users, a solution to problems with browsing the internet has to be effective enough to improve their efficiency or workflow.
From the people we interviewed: Bob, Course 16 Senior;

Mild ADHD/Difficulty Concentrating: This includes students that have ADHD to a lower degree i.e. they do not require medication and/or their condition is not extremely disruptive.
From the people we interviewed: Dina, Course 9 Junior

Supporters & Educators: Friends, Teachers, Counselors and Parents of students with ADHD

For students especially, teachers and counselors take an active role in helping them with ADHD, and so form a part of the user group for this problem. Their needs include being able to help the student tackle the internet browsing problem and receive feedback on how the student is doing. This is more applicable to high school students with ADHD.
From the people we interviewed: Tom Denton

Needs/Goals

3 High level goals:
Goals reflect three main stages of interacting with webpages

• Prevent abandonment of task at hand (initially coming across a website)** trying not to escape from the task or page
  • compensate for lack of patience
  • Prioritizing what to look at first that will be most helpful for understanding the big picture
  • Reduce time taken to understand pages with a lot of information
• Maintain interest in sites that may be less visually appealing (after being on the site for a little while)** Be able to read or understand long blocks of text
  • Stay focused on a specific topic or website at hand in order to obtain the information needed for work or study
• Regain user’s focus once it has been lost (focus is already lost, how to get back to it)** Going back to where the user started
  • Be able to go back to web pages that were previously visited to find what was interesting initially, without having to look through all of the information again
  • Remembering why a page was bookmarked
  • Keeping track of why new things needed to be looked up so that backtracking from current site to original site is easier

Support Group Goals:

• Understanding where the main problem lies for each individual (specific habits of the student)
• Adjusting or changing settings for the student to help them with their specific goals (staying on the same page, getting through long blocks of text, etc.)