Introduction

                Refocus.io is an app for web surfers with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), that aims to help them stay focused on a set task by changing the way they interact with a webpage through a Chrome Extension. The potential users we interviewed all had problems with skimming information, losing focus due to large sections of text, and getting distracted by clicking on links and failing to do the task at hand. 

Our app has 3 key features:

  1. Focus Mode:  By clicking the Focus button that hovers on top of the page, the article is broken into chunks the page based on paragraphs and presented in a pop up window. The user can navigate through the chunks by using the keyboard or the left and right arrow in the pop up window. This prevents users from getting overwhelmed by large blocks of text.
  2. Link Queueing: Links can be dragged from the page into the link queue. While in Focus Mode, left clicking on a link will automatically add it to the queue. This prevents distractions due to link clicking, and allows users to maintain a "task list".
  3. Selective Focusing: Some users only want to read a small section of an article. A user can select text in the article, then right click to open up the drop down menu. By selecting “Focus on Selection,” only the selected text will be chunked and Focused on.

Installation + Setup

Platform and Software Requirement:

This is a Chrome Extension, so you will need to use Chrome as your browser. The extension works on Mac and Windows. Latest version of Google Chrome, can be found here: https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/

Instructions: 

  1. Open up Chrome
  2. Download our Chrome Extension from: http://web.mit.edu/anvishap/www/app.zip
  3. Open up the settings tab by clicking on the three parallel bars in the top right of the screen
  4. Select Settings
  5. Click on the Extentions Tab, located above the Settings Tab
  6. Activate Developer Mode, then Load the Refocus_Extension file.
  7. Go to: http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/resort-of-last-resort/585/

Who Did What:

Max: Back-end for chunking
Kai: Back-end progress bar
Anvisha : Front-end, Styling, Graphics
Jake: Front-end, icons

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1 Comment

  1. Sarah E Lehmann

    Usability: When I hover over ""Help"" and ""Clear Completed"", I get a text cursor as opposed to a pointer. Clearing one link with the ""X"" seems to clear them all, and then I run into a bug where I can't add any more links to the list (though on reload the links that I've added appear). If I scroll through the page very quickly, there is some delay in background scrolling and the page is still scrolling after I exit focus mode. There are some interesting bugs with drag and drop, where if I drag the top link outside the extension and then bring it back and put it on the bottom (underneath the text), it snaps back to the top.

    Thanks for all your hard work this term!