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Introduction
Refocus.io is an app for web surfers with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), that aims to help them : The purpose of this app is to help ADHD web surfers stay focused on a set task by changing the way they interact with a webpage through a Chrome Extension. During our research, we found that this user population had three specific problems when using the web.
1. Skimming. ADHD users tend to scan text, and tend to only view the first and last sentence of a paragraph, as their goal was to finish articles as quick as possible.
2. Information Overload. How do we decide which paragraph, picture and link is most important? This was related to skimming, as users tend to skip boring information in pursuit of something more engaging.
3. Depth first searching. Many ADHD users would engage with a link, but never return to the article. It was very easy for them to disengage with a page, even if the information they needed was contained within it.
We have a few ways of modifying this user behavior, which we hope will alleviate the severity of these issue.
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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. You can read more about our User Research here.
Our app has 3 key features:
- Focus Mode: By clicking the Focus button that hovers on top of the page, the article is
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- broken into chunks
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- 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.
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- This prevents users from getting overwhelmed by large blocks of text.
- 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.
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- This prevents distractions due to link clicking, and allows users to maintain a "task list".
- 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.
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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.
Instructions:
1. Download our Chrome Extension from:
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3. There should be a button labeled "Load Unpacked Extension." Click on this button and select the folder that you saved on your computer.
Depth
Incomplete Elements:
1. Chunking is only partially implemented. While it works well for TheGlobalMail, other pages may display odd behavior. Our responses are not hard coded -- there is a functional backend.
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