Introduction:
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.
1. Focus Mode: By clicking the Focus tab at the start of the page, the article is automatically chunks 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.
2. Link Queuing: 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.
3. 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.
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:
2. Open up a new tab in the Chrome browser and type into the address bar of a new tab "chrome://extensions"
3. There should be a button labeled "Load Unpacked Extension." Click on this button and select the folder that you saved on your computer.
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.
2. Focus on Selection behavior is linked to some of the partially implemented Chunking, so there are still some bugs. Specifically, after all the selected text is displayed, the pop-up window may continue to loop through the text.
3. Pictures will be implemented into Chunking once we determine how to prevent ads from being “Chunkified.” This content is distracting.
4. As of writing this wiki, dragging a link to the Progress List may lead to the page scrolling away from the content. Once adding the link, the page will return to its original location automatically.
5. Preserving Progress List between Pages.
Canned Elements:
1. Highlighting: Additional colors were deemed distracting during user testing. Further, we couldn’t ensure the colors would work with novel webpages.
2. Gamifying: The buzz word of the year. Most of our users are very easily distracted, and adding more features distracted away from content.
a. Ideas canned: Note taking, timers, awards for articles red.
3. Reporting Mechanism: A lot of ADHD sufferers rely on a third party (Family, Friend, Teacher, etc…) to monitor their progress and ensure they are on task. In talking with our TA, we realized this may be outside the scope of what makes sense for the project.