Visit project gallery

Executive dysfunction aid

Degree Project 2024

Individuals with ADHD may mask their difficulties by focusing their energy on work or studies, resulting in the home being negatively affected. This can in turn have a negative impact on the person’s well-being such as developing depression or anxiety. A grown-up person with ADHD that lives alone can have a higher risk of neglecting their home due to nobody else being affected. As extrinsic motivation is the most effective form of motivation for people with ADHD, I’ve focused on designing a solution that utilizes that combined with keeping track on household chores and ease the prioritization of tasks. With its gamification aspects as well as it being a separate entity it can make household chores fun and rewarding without being a distraction.

Show more Show less

Methods

Through workshops and collaboration with both stakeholders and people from the user group the subject of how to motivate people with ADHD has been explored. While a lot of focus has been on the physical product with sketches and mockups there has also been a lot of time dedicated to trying out how the interface should work. As an important part of motivating people with ADHD is the feeling of novelty, something that wears off after some time, effort has been made to create something that not only works, but works overtime as well.

Result

VisQuest, a combination of Visual and Quest, is a visually appealing screen that shows a virtual growth with every finished task. To make tasks more appealing, they are also reframed as “Quests”.

For people with ADHD the problem is most often that they can’t decide on what should be prioritized in a sea of tasks that should be done, therefore VisQuest gives suggestions on what task should be prioritized. And to combat that the feeling of novelty runs out, the virtual growth can be changed and personalized to fit the personal interests of the user.

There are a lot of smartphone applications that work in similar ways, but they can often suffer from being drowned out by other notifications or applications that draws more attention. Therefore, VisQuest is its own stand alone product that both work as a “to-do” list while tackling a task, a visual reminder of what motivates them, as well as a visually appealing and everchanging art piece in the user's home.