WIAD Day: ADD/ADHD + Notifications

As a part of the World IA Day 2019 theme of "Design for Difference," CapTech's Customer Experience team challenged our designers, developers and strategists to collaborate on ideas to improve the experience for people who may need different access to information and technology, or language and cultural understanding, due to disabilities or abilities, difference in age, gender, or identifying differently in an experience.

CapTech's UX Designer, Sejla Petrovic, and Visual Designer, Shannon Flowerday, worked together to create this idea. Designed to help users with attention deficit disorders, this concept addresses the impact of notifications on their mobile devices.

It's no surprise notifications can be distracting and can feel consuming for any user. However, notifications can be particularly intrusive for users with ADD, ADHD, or anxiety. Notifications can divert the user's attention away from a core task and create a sense of urgency to respond.

We’ve tackled this challenge by creating a notification setting modal allowing the user to create time blocks when they don't receive notifications. For example, a user may not want to receive distracting notifications while at work. This setting would allow blocking push notifications from 9:00am to 5:00pm on weekdays. The users would then be able to focus on their work without distractions.