What is ADHD?
ADHD is a common condition that affects both kids and adults. It causes trouble with focus, hyperactivity, or impulsivity—or sometimes all three. Some people don’t realize they have it, but it can make daily tasks, school, or work more challenging. Unlike occasional distraction or restlessness, ADHD symptoms are stronger, happen more often, and impact everyday life.
Productive problems of ADHD
Problem 1 - Sustained attention
There are four types of attention: focused, sustained, selective, and alternating. Sustained attention is crucial for daily tasks like driving and work. ADHD patients struggle with it, affecting their ability to stay alert, shift tasks, and maintain focus. Patients with ADHD suffer from deficits in sustained attention which is sustained alertness, sustained selective attention and sustained divided attention
Source: L. Tucha, A. Fuermaier, J. Koerts, R. Buggenthin, S. Aschenbrenner, M. Weisbrod, J. Thome, K. W. Lange, O. Tucha.,Sustained attention in adult ADHD: time-on-task effects of various measures of attention, Journal of neural transmission 124, no. 1, 2017, p. 39-53.
Problem 4 - Real and immediate rewards
Mastery requires practice, but daily repetition feels dull. Without immediate rewards or urgency, they may struggle to follow through.
Problem 2 - Impulsivity -
Impulsivity is common in ADHD, often linked to a desire for immediate rewards. Studies show ADHD adolescents prefer instant rewards over delayed ones, unlike neurotypical individuals.
Research on temporal discounting (TD) found that inattention correlates with impulsive decision-making, especially when rewards are real. Hyperactive individuals opt for smaller, immediate rewards due to delay aversion rather than a preference for immediacy.
Source: B.Sonuga, Edmund JS, E. Taylor, S. Sembi, and J. Smith, “Hyperactivity and delay aversion—I. The effect of delay on choice”, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 33, no. 2, 1992, p. 387-398.
Problem 3 - One reminder is not enough
ADHD adults often need extra reminders to complete tasks, especially boring ones that lack immediate motivation. Time feels slow during uninteresting tasks and flies by during enjoyable ones.
Organizing helps manage time, belongings, and thoughts, but ADHD adults may forget to plan or get lost in perfecting their organization instead of completing tasks. Forgetfulness leads to missed deadlines, and even reminders can be forgotten within minutes. Distractions are constant—even checking the time can spiral into unrelated thoughts.
Goal of the research:
Understanding ADHD adults problems.
Find out the needs of Attention deficit adults.
Find out about already existing solutions used by ADHD adults to stay productive.
Research
To understand my audience and their daily problems I started with desk research and survey to understand the problems briefly.
It was difficult to find adults with ADHD who were willing to be interviewed. Sometimes, even when I did find them, they were shy or not interested in doing interviews. This made me think about different ways to gather information. Eventually, I managed to interview three adults who had been diagnosed with ADHD. I also looked for groups on Facebook and reddit forums, found many comments about the problems of ADHD.
This allowed me to collect a lot of comments about daily productivity as part of my research. In addition to interviews, I used research papers, analyzed online comments, and compared different sources of information as part of my research.
C. Methodology used:
To get a complete picture of the pain points and problems faced by ADHD adults in being productive, I conducted research using various methodologies
Comment Analysis:
From the ADHD support group on Facebook and Reddit comments of adults diagnosed, I collected all the posts and comments where people talked about their problems or shared solutions. Once I gathered all the information, I organized it into groups and identified the most common and important issues.
By analyzing the comments, I was able to understand how attention levels and emotions are connected throughout different stages of tasks in adults with ADHD. This understanding helped me see how it affects their work and personal lives. Specifically, the problem lies in all stages of the task life cycle.
Collection of comments related to productivity issues on Reddit and Facebook. Source: own study
Key outcomes
Problems are present in every stage of task lifecycle.
Not every tool available helps throughout starting, continuing, and finishing the work, like a to–do list just helps to plan but can’t motivate them to start.
Different problem in different stages of task lifecycle
I found comments where people discussed using various digital and physical tools, along with reminders and alarms, to help with their productivity. These comments indicate that individuals with ADHD often need to experiment and make changes to their tools in order to find what works best for them. It seems that existing productivity tools are not specifically designed to address the unique challenges faced by neurodiverse individuals like those with ADHD.
“Outlook on my phone making it easier to set multiple reminders and recurring appointments. Also the multiple alarms on my phone. I’ll sometimes set three alarms for a task or appointment with varying lengths of time left before the event begins.”
– ADHD user on Reddit support group
Interviews:
I conducted three interviews with adults who have been diagnosed with ADHD. Two of them were in their 20s, and one was in their late 30s. They were residents of the United States, Sydney (Australia), and Poland, respectively. Each of them had a different profession: one was a designer, another was a carpenter, and the third was a student working as a library assistant.
"I don't have a routine, I divide days in certain blocks"- Interviwee
Insights of 3 interviews
Key outcomes
ADHD adults often face challenges when it comes to starting tasks on time. Even when they do start, they may struggle to complete the task for several reasons.
Distractions play a significant role, as they can easily divert their attention away from the task at hand
They may also find themselves looking for more enjoyable or entertaining activities instead of focusing on their responsibilities.
Another factor is their difficulty in imagining the consequences of not finishing the task on time, which can diminish their motivation to stay engaged.
Additionally, their minds tend to wander, making it hard for them to stay focused on the task for extended periods. Sustaining attention for a long time can be particularly challenging for individuals with ADHD.
Needs of ADHD in user interviews
Reminders designed for ADHD, are stronger and notifies them more times than a typical adult.
"Reminders that won't go away. Not too complicated. If it's too hard or complicated then it won't help"- Interviewee 1
They need a reminder to plan for the task before the task starts.
"Categorize tasks and let them bump up or down, and courage setting a planning time before a due date reminder as well." - Survey answer
Memory challenges and insufficient information processing can impact task performance for individuals with ADHD. They often prefer visual or verbal reminders to aid their understanding and retention.
Need an interactive physical solution that engages them completely. reminders on the phone can distract and can be missed by an ADHD adult.
Mapping of situations to the problem
Different situations in comments were observed to go to the depth of the problem
Comparative Analysis of current tools and Applications:
Mobile applications from the existing market were evaluated and looked for Features, Concepts, How it functions, Rewards system, Feedback, problems faced by ADHD users, and analysis of problems referred by ADHD adults in achieving their goals were taken into consideration to decide our goal for the solution.
Comparative analysis of currently available apps based on their main idea, reward sy
Key outcomes of comparative analysis
Every application has an immediate reward system but most of the applications is does not have rewards that are meaningful or real rewards. Motivation is stimulated by instant rewards. ADHD adults perceive the desired result in the future as less valuable than the instant one.
Most of the application is digital, they prefer tangible products.
Current applications are designed to be complicated for ADHD users to understand. They need simple solutions.
The user wants to put less effort to maintain routine on the app. ADHD'rs want to put less input into the applications as the routine tasks become boring after a while.
Visually seeing a calendar helps as most ADHD are visual learners.
Research paper reviews:
I closely examined 20 recent studies and their metadata that focused on various aspects related to motivation, memory problems, attention difficulties, decision-making, executive functioning, rewards, and brain structure, as well as meta-analysis studies on career and academic difficulties. This extensive review brought us closer to understanding the underlying biological factors that contribute to the core issues at the root of the problem.
Key outcomes of reading scientific papers
The absence of the ability to process the information and work accordingly.
Lacking the ability to plan and implement strategies for achieving goals.
Executing problems like lack of persistence, and constant self–monitoring.
Inability to control emotions and thoughts while being productive.
Disorganization in working, maintaining time, and arriving on time.
Not having the ability to anticipate the consequences of their actions.
No flexible thinking and poor adaptation.
Perfectionism and procrastinating problems exist because of poor self–esteem.
The strengths of ADHD adults are in generating ideas (under competition), creative writing, playing music, acting, programming, and experimenting.
Books review
Some of the books I read in order to find History, Diagnosis, Symptoms, Problems because of deficiency, and Solutions which is already established in those books.
The reason for the problem is because of neurological problems in the brain like dopamine and other chemicals, blood flow, and some structural differences levels which affect working memory, behavior, emotional and learning problems.
Data of key problems
A summary of key problems, needs, and situations was taken from the research. Then the key problems related to each problem were brainstormed to build case studies. This helped to see the ADHD problems and their deficiency closely which further helped in coming close to needs.
2.3 Project goals
Goals are important to set early on in the project so as to validate ideas based on the set goals. I identified the following goals for the project:
The overall goal is to improve their work–life and give them a tool to self–reflect. ADHD adults have a tough time managing their day–to–day work and personal life. It can be a lot more demanding to them compared to a healthy adult. With the help of this solution, I would like to help alleviate their lifestyle.
Goals of the product after conducting the research
Persona
A general persona and 4 other personas were created to look for frustrations, goals, and behavior of ADHD adults. The persona was created based on the research.
Identified frustrations, goals, and behavior of ADHD adults by interviews and research. Created an empathy map by real situations I saw the comments online to put myself in users' emotional state
Proto persona and empathy map from interviews and online research
When an ADHD user sees other people are able to work and finish on time, he tries to do it too but gets distracted, feels overwhelmed by the deadline, and is now stressed. He can’t perceive time and ends up working in a hurry, and not being able to work to his full potential.
E. Summary
My research has provided me with valuable information about ADHD adults. Interviews and youtube channels of ADHD adults have given me a very close glimpse of ADHD adult’s life.
This is the first time where I myself have had to look at how can I take more information out with limited resources, I had many comments and feedback online which has helped me collect data and do comment analysis. Comment analysis has given me a lot of data on almost every problem of ADHD adults. As I could also see what methods and tools worked or didn’t work for ADHD adults and take a closer look at other frustrations of ADHD adults.
ADHD adults struggle to do day-to-day tasks. On a day a normal person has to do various daily chores, ADHD adults find these chores rather challenging. When faced with a big to-do list of things even normal adults get overwhelmed. In such cases, ADHD adults have this overwhelmed feeling that makes them incapable of going through their day. It drains ADHD adults when they go through their day with the several tasks they do. There are several online communities that help ADHD adults to deal with their problems. The solutions provided by the community give them hope to do better the next time.