Todew
Group Project | App Design | UX Design
Project: Find an instance of educational inequality that an app you design could help. ADHD in college students is a prevalent but often ignored issue that we aimed to assist in by providing an app that coaches, encourages, and organizes the user.
Educational Inequality
Many college students aren’t even aware of their attention disorder until they reach that higher level of education. Issues with concentration, memory, and regulating their emotions negatively impact their academic life. Not everyone can afford therapy or medication, so how were we going to help them succeed?
Todew
Todew is an app designed by ADHD students, for ADHD students in order to provide support and encouragement to students who struggle with attention disorders. With their a simple and clean calendar/to-do list, a Pomodoro method based work timer, and a mood tracker all rolled into one, Todew caters to the ADHD experience from beginning to end.
Our Research
Using secondary research, interviewing real students with ADHD, and auditing the competition, we discovered the three main problems that would inform how we build our app: inattention/hyperactivity, memory issues, and emotional disregulation.
Why Todew?
Our mascot and character, Todew, was inspire by one best practice we found for coping with ADHD: taking care of plants and animals. Research shows that when one takes care of another living thing, they are much more motivated to take care of themselves. Our character acts as motivator, coach, and friend, cared for by the user as they complete their tasks.
Our preliminary sketches helped us figure out what our core functions needed to look like, how our Todew character could function, and begin figuring out what assets would need to be design for our brand.
Core Functions
Calendar – memory issues and organization.
Writing it down
People with ADHD struggle with remembering tasks, so creating a simple task list and habit tracker allows Todew to remind the user of their obligations and coaches them in forming good habits.
Pomodoro Work Timer – inattention and hyperactivity.
The Pomodoro Technique
This is a best practice for students with ADHD that breaks up long periods of focus. Work for 25 minutes, break for 5, and repeat three times until you earn a full hour break. Repeat the process until your task is complete.
Body Doubling
Studies show that when you’re working, having another person in the room working at the same time helps improve focus. While the timer is going, we have Todew reading or working at the same time to simulate this experience.
Positive Encouragement
People with ADHD respond strongly to positive encouragement, so we have Todew do so whenever possible.
Mood Tracker – emotional dysregulation
Mood Regulation
People with ADHD have trouble being mindful of themselves and how they feel, resulting in emotional outbursts and emotional dysregulation. Including this makes Todew stand out from the competition as an app for specifically those with ADHD.
By allowing users to track their mood, Todew creates an insightful database of their emotions and what caused them. Whether they use it personally or with a professional, the mood tracker helps them help themselves
Screen Flow & Extension
Because of the real-world benefits of Todew, it only made sense to us that we should extend the brand off screen.
A planner allows for users to keep Todew with them without distracting screens, and allows the Todew brand to become synonimous with organization on all levels.
