FocusForward

Generative AI tool that aids college students with ADHD

Overview

FocusForward is a platform that assists college students with ADHD through generative AI technology and one-on-one coaching/mentoring.

*Please note that the name of the client has been changed due to an NDA agreement and I will be using FocusForward to anonymize the client.

Role: UX/UI Designer

Duration: 8 weeks

Tools: Figma, FigJam

Team Members: 5 UX designers

The Challenge

According to the National Institute of Health, a staggering “9.1%” of college students with ADHD drop out, highlighting urgent need for specialized support and new resources. These students often struggle in higher education without the proper tools and guidance.

The Solution

FocusForward is a desktop platform that helps college students with ADHD achieve their academic goals by using a generative AI tool that breaks down academic tasks into smaller, more manageable actions. This tool, paired with one-on-one coaching, provides students with personalized strategies to succeed.

Discover

Before we could begin designing our platform, we needed to make sure that we understood our users and who we were designing for. We conducted 10 interviews with college students diagnosed with ADHD to better understand their experience with ADHD in school, their habits and strategies they use to manage their workload, and academic tools and resources they use.

We uncovered the following key insights:

Users often forget or procrastinate assignments and fall behind their peers.

Students with ADHD often forget to write down or keep track of assignments, resulting in missed deadlines. This creates a challenging cycle: as they fall further behind, they often feel overwhelmed and uncertain about where to begin. As the pressure mounts, it makes it difficult for them to complete subsequent assignments if they believe they are too far behind to catch up.

01

Users are often discouraged when struggling and experience burnout.

Many students express feelings of discouragement when they see their peers succeeding in areas that they are struggling in. They feel isolated from their peers who don’t seem to be struggling as much as them.

02

Users need to form better study habits and time management skills.

Students struggle to adapt to the increased workload and expectations in college, leading to difficulties managing their time effectively. They never had to form strong study habits in high school and struggle to adjust.

03

Getting Organized with a Site Map

Now that we understood our users’ needs and frustrations, we could create our site map to organize the structure and content of the desktop application. Before beginning to design, we needed to make sure that users could navigate through the application easily and effectively, starting from when they first click on the website.

Design

Design Style Guide

High Fidelity Wireframes

Breaking down academic tasks into smaller actions

FocusForward generative-AI technology breaks down one large assignment into smaller actions that are more manageable for the student. It generates suggested actions that the student can tailor to their specific needs and schedule.

Stay organized and view all assignments and calendar in one place

Clean, simple dashboard allows students to visualize all assignments with the snapshot of upcoming actions, weekly view Calendar, and the FocusForward mascot that lets the student know their progress.

Easily manage and track upcoming assignments and actions

Students are able to easily filter and manage all upcoming, due, and overdue activities on their My Activities page.

Conclusion

Reflection

  1. Importance of voicing opinions: I learned first hand on this design sprint how vital it is to speak up with feedback. When we were first starting the design process, the CEO assigned all of the designers separate flows to work on at the same time. We learned quickly that it was difficult to work independently before we had a strong vision of how the desktop application would work together and interact. We agreed that our designs would be more effective if we collaborated together before splitting off into working individually. We voiced our concerns to the CEO and helped her understand where we were coming from in our process, and we succeeded in convincing her to rethink things. This sped up the process for us and allowed us to be confident that we were all on the same page before focusing on separate user flows. If we hadn’t brought our concerns to the CEO, we would have wasted a lot of time and would not have created a product that was as user-friendly.

  2. Real world projects don’t utilize the perfect double diamond of design process: Being under tight time constraints to effectively design and implement our designs in 8 weeks meant that we had to cut corners and work on some aspects of the discover and design process simultaneously. We did not have ample time to complete all of our research before beginning with the designs. This was a good learning experience for me to understand that real world projects do not follow a perfect process and I must be dynamic and able to work on multiple tasks at once to create effective designs under tight timelines.

Next Steps

  1. Complete more usability tests: Because this project was completed during an internship, I did not stay on to see this desktop application piloted with students. I am very interested in testing this with real students and seeing how the product works as they input assignments for the entire semester. I am also interested in most used features of the MVP and features that are missing to implement.

  2. Iteration: Results from usability testing with current students piloting the application would allow the team to prioritize and refine features for the next phase of design. These insights will guide in enhancing the user experience and ensuring that our product meets the evolving needs of our customers.