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Jen Gallagher

Hi, I'm Jen. I'm a Content Designer with a background in educational publishing. My research project explores how academic journal websites can be made more accessible, specifically for students with ADHD. You can see some highlights of my research project below and can check out my website for a more detailed look at the work I completed throughout the course.

JournalMate: An academic reading tool for students with ADHD

Research states that college students with ADHD experience less academic success and greater psychological and emotional difficulties than other students. Reading is a struggle for adults and children with ADHD. Both adults and children with ADHD are likely to become disinterested or distracted, miss details and lose track of where they are on the page. Adults with ADHD obtained significantly worse results than the neurotypical adults on reading speed and responses to literal questions. Additionally, Reaser, Prevatt, Petscher & Proctor found that college students with ADHD detailed greater levels of difficulty than their neurotypical peers in outlining, note taking and summarising information.

User-centred design is a process which focuses on user needs in each phase of the design process. The aim of the user-centred design process for this study was to improve the user experience by increasing the usefulness, ease of use, ease of learning and satisfaction.

The research framework was structured around three phases, first to explore the user’s needs and define their problems. The second phase to synthesise and refine potential design solutions, which address the user needs specified in the first phase. The goal of the final phase was to validate the design solution with the intended users via usability testing.

The survey gathered opinions and feelings on how ADHD affected their college experience.

The qualitative data from the interviews indicated that each student with ADHD experienced academic difficulty to some degree. The main five themes that were identified were (1) academic struggle, (2) executive dysfunction, (3) experience with academic reading, (4) poor UX and (5) strategies.

Aisling was chosen as the primary persona as she embodied what the user research outlined about who the target user was. Another deciding factor for choosing Aisling, was the fact that she was only recently diagnosed with ADHD. This indicated that she would not have had any assistance during her education which allowed for richer feature exploration.

Once the core functionality was decided, a number of task flows and screens were sketched. Following on from the sketches, a number of low-fidelity wireframes were created using Figma. It was important to focus on the functionality of JournalMate before any colour palette was decided upon. This would ensure the structure of the design was clear and everything would be equal weight so the whole user experience could be focused on. It would also ensure the wireframes were completed in a timely manner. The UI design would be completed at a later stage in the design process.

Overall, the prototype with customisation was the preferred design for all 10 participants, which indicates the importance of user freedom and control. This relates back to the research which states that the reason customisation is popular is because of its’ ability to restore power and control to the user, by allowing them to choose options and set preferences within a system. Distraction was mentioned in almost all of the user interviews that were conducted in the research phase of the project. Therefore, keeping the design of JournalMate as clutter-free as possible was an important aspect of the design process.

The results of the study indicated that participants found the design with customisation easier to use than the standard version. This implies that the customised version is more user friendly, easier to use and more flexible. This is an interesting implication as the prototype design with customisation had more complexity involved with the addition of the custom settings toolbar.

A quick explanation of some of the features of JournalMate

Project Description

The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the lived experience of third-level students with ADHD, with academic reading, and also to understand how customisation of an academic reading tool impacts the user experience. With the number of third-level students in Ireland registering with student disability services increasing by 268% over the past twelve years, there was a need for conducting further research, particularly in the context of third-level students with ADHD, to strengthen existing but limited evidence.

JournalMate: An academic reading tool for third-level students with ADHD

JournalMate is an accessible academic reading tool to support third-level students with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This research project was conducted in three phases using a user-centred design process. The initial research phase explored cognitive processing difficulties associated with ADHD, reading habits and user needs. A series of interviews with three subject matter experts and eight students with ADHD aimed to identify pain points and problems hindering users from carrying out academic reading efficiently and confidently. Phase two involved ideating solutions based on data collected in the first phase, focusing on developing a tool to assist with academic reading. Phase three concluded with the resulting prototyped solution being evaluated by 10 users. The data gathered during this evaluation provides insight into the performance of the application and will aid in any subsequent design iteration. The output of the study is an accessible academic reading tool, referred to as JournalMate, for third-level students with ADHD. Results provided additional data to build on previous study findings and existing theories. Future practical implications are discussed, along with limitations.

User Experience Design

2021 2022 2023 2024

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