MindTab: Co-Designing for ADHD
Participatory Design • Human-Computer Interaction • Storyboarding • Health Tech
Overview
MindTab is a co-designed Chrome extension developed to support individuals with ADHD in managing their emotional energy, understanding their symptoms, and reducing burnout through self-awareness. Developed in close partnership with a college student recently diagnosed with ADHD, the tool emphasizes flexible, non-intimidating ways to track mood, learn about ADHD, and reflect on daily experiences. Through participatory design methods and iterative prototyping, we crafted a personalized digital solution that integrates seamlessly into a user’s workflow—balancing structure, empathy, and user autonomy.
Project Brief
This project was completed as part of a 10-week inclusive design course, where I collaborated in a team of 4 UX researchers and designers. Together, we partnered with a University of Washington psychology student who was recently diagnosed with ADHD to co-create a meaningful tool grounded in their lived experiences. The goal of the project was not only to build a functional tool but to build with the user—challenging our assumptions, centering their voice, and learning how ADHD manifests uniquely in their life.
The Proposal
Throughout the project, we conducted in-depth interviews, visual storytelling sessions, and collaborative design activities. As researchers, we facilitated co-design sessions, coded qualitative data, synthesized insights, and created design principles that directly reflected our partner’s emotional and cognitive needs. We transformed these principles into a working prototype for a Chrome extension that uses mood tracking, ADHD education, and visual reflection to support energy management and emotional regulation.
Reflection on Assumptions
Prior to direct collaboration with our partner, we developed a set of initial assumptions grounded in existing literature and common discourse around ADHD and digital interaction. This reflection served to identify potential blind spots in our framing and ensure our design research was guided by inquiry rather than prescription.
>What Might Be Difficult or Exclusionary for the Partner?
We hypothesized that individuals with ADHD may face challenges in both physical and digital environments, particularly around task initiation, context switching, and managing distractions. These assumptions were drawn from a combination of peer-reviewed studies (primarily focused on children and adolescents), expert discourse, and anecdotal patterns observed in online ADHD communities.
Digital Interactions:
Research suggests a complex relationship between technology use and ADHD symptoms. For example, frequent task switching and tab proliferation in web browsers may lead to cognitive overload or disorientation. Mainstream browsers, such as Chrome, lack built-in mechanisms for task grouping or priority management, which could exacerbate these issues.
Physical Environments:
We assumed that rigid study spaces (e.g., libraries, traditional classrooms) may be exclusionary due to a lack of flexibility in posture, noise levels, or stimulation. Conversely, environments with excessive visual or auditory input may also hinder sustained attention. These assumptions were based on generalized studies, but we recognized the need to validate them through first-person accounts.
Technology as Both Barrier and Enabler:
Literature shows that digital interventions (e.g., games, training programs, mindfulness apps) can support neural engagement and reduce anxiety for individuals with ADHD. However, not all users may find these tools helpful or accessible in practice.
>Are these assumptions well-founded?
While many assumptions were supported by secondary sources, we recognized that such generalizations may not apply to all individuals, particularly adults recently diagnosed with ADHD. Our partner, for instance, is navigating a new self-understanding—this requires sensitivity to identity formation, stigma, and personal variability. Moreover, gendered patterns in ADHD diagnosis informed our approach: as women are often diagnosed later in life, their experiences may diverge significantly from those captured in early-intervention studies.
Mitigating Assumptions in the Research Process
Question Framing
Prioritizing open-ended, exploratory questions such as “What kinds of environments help you focus?” rather than “Do you struggle with noise?” This approach invites nuance and respects the partner’s agency in defining their own experiences.
Technology Inquiry
Rather than assuming common productivity tools are used by them, we asked, “Which tools or apps have been helpful or unhelpful for you?” This allowed the partner to identify both pain points and workarounds from their own perspective.
Avoiding overgeneralization
Recognizing that our partner is newly diagnosed, we avoided framing questions in a way that presumed self-awareness of all ADHD-related challenges. We also left space to explore how social and institutional structures—such as academic expectations—may have shaped their experience.
1 Initial Framing and Need-Finding
Methodology: Semi-structured interview + generative activity
Key Tactics: Open-ended questions and probing, visual elicitation (self-portrait and timeline drawing), and contextual inquiry
Need-Finding Session Summary
In this session, our co-design partner, recently diagnosed with ADHD in their early 20s, shared their complex journey with us. They described the experience of masking their ADHD symptoms for years, which resulted in mental burnout, depression, and anxiety. While the ADHD diagnosis brought clarity, enabling them to better understand their struggles, it also highlighted several persistent challenges. Notably, they discussed the difficulty in initiating tasks due to a lack of dopamine, which often led to procrastination and energy depletion. Additionally, decision-making, especially with more complex tasks, caused significant stress.
Following, we designed a 20-minute drawing activity—tailored to their interest in drawing. This activity included three 5-minute prompts aimed at unpacking their energy management while balancing daily responsibilities. The resulting visuals reflected their emotional exhaustion after completing tasks, as well as the crucial need for downtime to recharge.
Key Findings
After generating individual codes from the interview, we compiled our codes in a FigJam board to perform thematic analysis. Our qualitative data showed key findings:
Understanding self after diagnosis
Getting diagnosed with ADHD helped our partner better understand their own behaviors, be more forgiving for their actions, and learn how to manage symptoms.
Emotional toll of masking
Describes masking as “hiding the true state of mental/emotional being in order to act in a way that is socially acceptable”. Masking causes their energy to drain quickly, making it difficult for them to remain in social situations for long.
Disconnect between effort and fulfillment in completing tasks
After completing a task, our partner often does not feel fulfilled, as they have to spend their energy to complete them. Then, they lack motivation to move on to other tasks. They mentions they sometimes “feel even more tired after completing the task instead of [it being] reward[ing].”
Difficulties starting tasks
Experience with mental paralysis when starting tasks, especially tasks that are high stress, lengthy, or time consuming. Resulting in procrastination and/or inconsistent engagement.
Decision-making feels mentally overwhelming
Executive dysfunction leads to burnout, which is a common ADHD symptom as they lack dopamine — a neurotransmitter crucial for decision making.
Problem Definition
Based on the findings, we came up with the following HMW questions to guide our design direction:
How might we support individuals with ADHD in managing energy levels to avoid burnout?
How might we help users initiate tasks by reducing the intimidation factor and boosting motivation?
How might we create a tool that enables ADHD individuals to make decisions more effectively, reducing decision paralysis?
2 Co-Design
People involved: 3 researchers, co-design partner, myself
My role: Lead facilitator
Location: Odegaard Library Meeting Room, University of Washington
Session duration: 2 hours
Ideation sketching with our co-design partner and narrowing down a design direction
Session Overview
Before the co-design session, we presented the key findings from our interview analysis and confirmed these insights with our co-design partner. We asked for their input on what was most important to address moving forward, with their top priorities being reducing burnout risk through improved self-awareness and emotional regulation, and gaining a deeper understanding of their ADHD symptoms. This feedback led us to refine our "How Might We" research question:
How might we create a tool that helps individuals with ADHD understand their symptoms and develop mindfulness around their emotions to reduce the risk of burnout?
During the 2-hour co-design session, we engaged our partner in activities like sticky note sorting and a design audit to explore their interests, challenges, and preferences. These insights informed the collaborative ideation phase, where we sketched potential solutions and aligned on a final design direction.
Research Impact
User Impact
Our co-design partner, an individual recently diagnosed with ADHD, helped us surface and validate a set of core needs that are often overlooked in productivity-focused design solutions. Through a need-finding interview and a collaborative co-design session, we identified that challenges around task completion were rooted less in time management, and more in energy regulation, emotional awareness, and self-understanding. These insights led to the creation of four user-centered design principles that directly reflect the lived experience of our target audience and shaped our concept development process.
Research-Informed Strategy
Each design principle was developed through a synthesis of generative research (semi-structured interviews) and participatory design (co-design session activities like sticky note sorting and design audit). Rather than entering the session with a pre-defined solution, we used the 4 Actions Framework (Eliminate, Reduce, Raise, Create) to support open-ended exploration while maintaining structure in our data collection.
We made a deliberate choice to deprioritize traditional task management features after identifying that our partner—and likely many users with ADHD—struggled more with initiating tasks due to energy and emotional dysregulation, rather than with task visibility or scheduling. Instead, our product focuses on helping users anticipate and respond to those internal states, enabling better decision-making about when and how to engage with their daily responsibilities.
Product Impact
While initially scoped for individuals with ADHD, MindTab’s focus on emotional tracking, flexible education, and behavioral insight extends to a wider audience. Its modular architecture allows future iterations to adapt the experience based on user data, presenting an opportunity to build a scalable tool for self-awareness across neurodiverse populations. Future iterations may incorporate adaptive content suggestions or data-driven learning recommendations, allowing the tool to evolve with the user over time.
Design Principles & Concept Integration
Deriving from qualitative analysis from our need-finding interview and participatory co-design session, we identified 4 main Design Principles to explore our research question: “How might we create a tool that helps individuals with ADHD understand their symptoms and develop mindfulness around their emotions to reduce the risk of burnout?” These principles served as a framework to guide early ideation and ensure that all concepts aligned with both the user’s goals and our research objectives.
Concept 2: ADHD Resource Tab (Chrome Extension)
This browser extension delivers short, evidence-based ADHD tips ("Hack of the Day") every time a new tab is opened. A search bar allows users to look up resources (articles, videos, tools) filtered by topic (e.g., focus, emotional regulation). The extension applies principles of ambient learning and passive information delivery to reduce friction while increasing user exposure to relevant educational content.
>Guided by the Design Principle… “Use external information to help educate individuals about their ADHD symptoms. Individuals often blame themselves for specific actions without realizing their connection with ADHD. Our products should use credible, research-backed resources to help individuals learn about ADHD. ”
>That was informed by the finding… Our partner described internalized self-blame and knowledge gaps stemming from a late ADHD diagnosis. They reported that understanding their condition and how ADHD symptoms impacts daily life retroactively improved their self-compassion.
Concept 1: Mood Tracker (Mobile Widget)
The mobile widget prompts users to log their mood or energy levels at scheduled or user-defined intervals. To reduce cognitive overhead, users select from a simplified scale and optionally add context. Logged data is visualized as trends over time, with retrospective insights and optional journaling. This design aligns with Just-in-Time Adaptive Interventions (JITAI), supporting behavior change through lightweight, context-aware prompts.
>Guided by the Design Principle… “Design interactions that prompt users to track emotional and energy levels throughout the day to give them a reference point for when they feel similar emotions to the past. By offering real-time insights and past references to similar emotional states, our design encourages users to develop mindfulness around their symptoms to reduce burnout.”
>That was informed by the finding… Our partner expressed frequent experiences of burnout due to a lack of awareness of their emotional or energy states until symptoms escalated. They emphasized the need for proactive insight into how they feel throughout the day.
Concept 3: Task Organizer (Desktop)
Combining functionality from Canvas, Notion, and Google Calendar, this interface allows users to switch between list-based, block-based, and calendar-based task views. It integrates with academic platforms to auto-populate events and deadlines. Task checkboxes and a visual progress tracker reinforce a sense of momentum.
>Guided by the Design Principle… “Encourage a flexible and creative approach to managing tasks and responsibilities. Our products should be adaptable to a variety of ways to organize their responsibilities so individuals can find the method that works best for them when approaching tasks, as well as feel a sense of motivation to complete them each day. As explained in our HMW question, allowing our audience to customize their experience to themselves is important in preserving the mindfulness factor in understanding their emotions. Additionally, adding creative components will help retain usage of our design solution.”
>That was informed by the finding… In our interview and design audit activity, our project partner expressed frustration with productivity tools like Google Calendar. They mentioned that it is difficult to key everything to specific time slots on a particular date, believing that can be restrictive at times. They expressed the need for more flexibility to arrange different types of responsibilities without strict scheduling constraints. In addition, they shared that clearing completed tasks at the end of the day gives them a sense of accomplishment.
Concept 4: Structured Reflection Journal (Physical)
This journaling tool provides optional prompts based on prior mood logs, energy data, or task performance. Users can tag entries with activities, emotions, and coping strategies, which are later aggregated to reveal behavioral trends. The journal supports both free entry and structured modes, helping users identify what contributes to emotional regulation or burnout over time.
>Guided by the Design Principle… “Give individuals a way to reflect on past experiences to build self-awareness. Revisiting patterns in emotions and effective activities that have worked in the past can help individuals navigate present and future ones. Our products should guide effective coping strategies and create actionable steps tailored to their needs. This connects to our research question by helping individuals navigate future experiences with symptoms through giving them a platform to revisit past experiences. This fulfills our goal of helping them with mindfulness through learning from prior experiences and learning about their emotions.”
>That was informed by the finding… As someone who received a late ADHD diagnosis, they shared that looking back on past experiences has often helped them make sense of their symptoms in ways they hadn’t previously recognized. They expressed that, at times, they were unsure whether they were masking, why certain activities felt more draining than others, or why they are low energy. Engaging in reflection—especially with guiding questions or summaries of their emotions—could help them discover patterns they hadn’t noticed in the moment and better understand how ADHD influences their daily life. Our product should help reflect on emotions, energy levels, and behaviors in order to allow individuals to gain deeper self-awareness and find strategies for future challenges.
Methodologies
Pilot testing round to refine co-design activities and discussion questions.
4 Action Framework designed for product usability testing.
Literature Review: Conducting a literature review helped to establish a foundation of existing knowledge about ADHD, emotional regulation, and burnout. This research provided insights into common user challenges, strategies for managing ADHD, and gaps in existing tools and solutions, which directly informed the design process.
Problem Definition: During the Problem Definition phase, we conducted need-finding interviews with our co-design partner. These conversations were crucial in understanding the specific challenges they face in managing ADHD, including how emotional regulation and burnout impact their daily life.
Pilot Testing: Pilot testing was conducted prior to interviews and co-design sessions with peers outside of the team to assess the logistics, timing, and structure of the activities. This phase allowed us to test the session dynamics and identify any potential bottlenecks in the process, ensuring smoother and effective sessions with our partner.
The pilot phase led to several adjustments in the co-design session protocol. Initially, the session included three distinct activities along with a sketching portion. However, following feedback from the pilot testing, we streamlined the session to focus on two primary activities: the Sticky Note Sorting exercise and a new Design Audit activity. The introduction of the Design Audit offered a deeper understanding of our co-design partner’s preferences by evaluating existing tools they were familiar with. This provided valuable insights into what elements were working or not working, ultimately guiding our transition from task organization to solution ideation.
Card Sorting (participatory design): To better understand how our co-design partner organizes their tasks and responsibilities, we used card sorting. This method helped us identify how they mentally group tasks, by working directly with our co-design partner during this activity, we ensured that the tool would be intuitive and resonate with their thought processes.
Design Audit with Flashcards (participatory design): The Design Audit involved using flashcards to evaluate 4 familiar and 4 unfamiliar tools with our co-design partner. The goal of this participatory design exercise was to identify what worked well and what didn't, by exploring how these tools fit into our partner's needs and routines.
4 Actions Framework (Eliminate, Reduce, Raise, Create): To maintain flexibility and allow our co-design partner to lead the design direction based on their lived experiences, we employed the 4 Actions Framework during the design audit—an approach inspired by Blue Ocean Strategy that helps to upend an industry's strategic profile. By categorizing existing tool features into the four actions of eliminate, reduce, raise, and create, we were able to collect meaningful data while still leaving room for organic discussions. This methodology ensured that we remained focused on addressing core user needs, while providing a structured approach to uncovering which elements of the design should be prioritized, adjusted, or discarded.
Ideation Sketching (participatory design): This methodology emphasized equal collaboration between researchers and our co-design partner. After sketching several concepts, we worked together to discuss and refine a final design direction. Key components identified for the final concept included a mood tracker, which aimed to facilitate better emotional awareness, a self-reflection tool, and a one-touch, low time commitment interface. The iterative feedback during the sketching process helped us narrow down the most valuable features, ensuring they aligned with both the partner’s needs and our research findings.
Design Principles: After the co-design session, we developed 4 main design principles as flexible, guiding frameworks rather than prescriptive product solutions. Given that we did not have a fully formed solution at the outset, these principles were kept descriptive, focusing on the key priorities that emerged from our research and co-design sessions. They served to inform and constrain the ideation process, focusing on practical, actionable criteria.
Rapid Concept Sketching: This rapid, iterative approach emphasized generating as many ideas under each Design Principle as possible, and test out different solutions quickly. The goal was to maximize creative output and explore a wide range of potential directions. With a decision matrix, we narrowed to one most promising concept under each Design Principle to refine further in the next stages of design.
Feedback rounds (participatory design): During moderated usability testing sessions, our partner interacted with the prototype and provided valuable feedback on usability, functionality, and design flow. This testing allowed us to identify pain points and make necessary improvements before the final iteration.
Heuristic Evaluation: We incorporated principles from Heuristic Evaluation to systematically assess the usability of our final design tool. This included evaluating the tools against common usability heuristics, such as consistency, error prevention, and user control. By combining both the user-centered feedback from our co-design partner and the heuristic evaluation framework, we gained a comprehensive understanding of the tools’ usability and how we could improve the MindTab design to ensure it would be both functional and user-friendly.
Information Architecture (IA) Design: During usability testing, we quickly identified users are easily overwhelmed by cluttered interfaces. To address this, we applied IA principles to structure the content efficiently and prioritize the most relevant features, like the mood tracker and daily tips, which are displayed in a simplified, digestible format. By integrating IA and iterating based on behavior patterns observed in testing we aimed to balance educational value and user engagement—two key aspects for product adoption.
Card Sorting and Design Audit activity during the co-design session.
Finalized Co-Design Concept: MindTab
Digital wireframes of MindTab’s key features for usability testing.
The final design, MindTab, is a Chrome extension that integrates emotional awareness and ADHD-related learning into the user’s existing digital environment. This concept emerged from co-design insights indicating a strong preference for desktop tools over mobile applications. Our partner noted that mobile calendar apps felt restrictive, whereas browser-based tools like Notion allowed for more natural task flow and better integration into their daily routines. Embedding support into the browser ensured the intervention would be contextually relevant and non-disruptive.
Iterations of Mindtab notifications and mood tracker pop-up.
Key Features
Mood Tracker (Design Principle 1: Emotional Awareness):
A minimal, one-touch mood and energy logging interaction appears at user-defined intervals. This feature supports passive mood tracking throughout the day and generates trend summaries to help users identify behavioral or emotional patterns over time—crucial for preventing burnout and supporting executive function in ADHD.
Tip of the Day (Design Principle 2: Self-Paced Learning):
Users receive micro-interventions in the form of research-backed insights about ADHD each time they open a new browser tab. This format leverages contextual microlearning without increasing cognitive load. Users are not required to complete formal lessons; rather, content is passively absorbed over time, supporting late-diagnosed individuals still learning about their condition.
Customizable Interface (Design Principle 3: Flexibility):
Users can opt in or out of individual features (e.g., mood tracking, tips) and control when prompts appear. This respects attention variability and cognitive fatigue—feedback repeatedly emphasized the need for autonomy over how and when to engage with the product.
Weekly Summary View (Design Principle 4: Retrospective Insight)
Mood and learning data are synthesized into a lightweight weekly report to surface trends and promote reflection. This feature encourages pattern recognition and supports long-term behavior change by helping users draw connections between their symptoms and daily routines.
Storyboard showing our partner’s interaction with MindTab.
Reflection & Learnings
Designing for neurodivergence requires unlearning assumptions about productivity, motivation, and attention.
Prototyping and iterative design are essential not only for collecting user feedback but also for minimizing product risk. Each round of testing validated or challenged our design assumptions early, ensuring that our solution aligned with real user needs. This process not only helped refine our features for better usability but also ensured that we didn’t waste time on untested concepts. For example, early prototypes included extensive task management features, but usability testing revealed that users were more concerned with managing their energy and emotional regulation. By shifting focus in response to this feedback, we were able to save valuable time and resources while also delivering more relevant features.
Inclusive design isn’t a checkbox—it’s a mindset. It emphasizes the importance of who defines the problems and solutions. Through this project, I learned the importance of designing research protocols that invite participation, rather than impose predefined solutions. This user-centered approach ensures that people feel heard, which leads to greater product adoption and advocacy. When users are actively involved in shaping the product, it becomes more personal and relevant to their needs, ultimately increasing the chances of success.
As a designer, I’m learning to ask: What assumptions are we coding into the product—and who might we inadvertently leave out by doing so?