ACCESSIBILITY PROJECT
StudyBud
Led 0 to 1 design for an MVP of a Pomodoro study app for people with ADHD
Responsibilities
Context
Tools
Outcomes
UX/UI Design
Product Design & Management
User Research
Market Analyst
Market Strategy
Team: 4 Designers
Duration: 12 weeks
Figma
Figjam
Procreate
Photoshop
Designed MVP
Presented at Project Expo
Received overwhelmingly positive feedback from experts, mentors, and users.
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SUMMARY
A non-human AI companion that helps ADHD users initiate and sustain focus through ambient presence and customizable feedback—without requiring live interaction or social pressure
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Introducing a unique way to body double and get your work done.
Choosing a AI character
Starting a Session
Getting rewards
THE PROBLEM
"I have ADHD and have used a lot of apps but I still can't focus and get many tasks done!"
People with ADHD often struggle to maintain focus and motivation during independent work sessions. Current productivity tools rely heavily on rigid systems or social accountability, which can lead to stress or disengagement.
While body-doubling has proven effective in sustaining attention, it depends on real-time human presence—something not always accessible or comfortable. There remains a gap for low-pressure, adaptive support that fosters focus without social or structural constraints.
| How Might We engage users with ADHD (and even without) start boring tasks and
| incentivize them to complete them?
UNDERSTANDING ADHD
So.. I myself don't have ADHD. How can I possible starting asking others who do?
Answer: Initial research.
To really understand ADHD, we looked at it from every angle. We spoke with experts like Dr. Sharmila Roy, Tessa Eagle, and Stacey Soderquist, who helped us unpack how attention, motivation, and accountability work for people with ADHD. Then we dove into six peer-reviewed studies on body-doubling and productivity to ground our insights in research.
Outside the lab, we explored ADHD communities on Youtube and Instagram, learning directly from people’s stories about what actually helps them focus, and what doesn’t. We tested popular “ADHD” productivity apps to see how they support (or overwhelm) users in practice.
Bringing these perspectives together gave us a clearer picture of ADHD not as a lack of focus, but as a complex balance between environment, structure, and emotional energy. It informs our user interviews as we can enter those conversations with empathy, a foundational understanding, and awareness.
UNDERSTANDING OUR USERS
We interviewed 9 people with ADHD to understand their task completion processes and frustrations
The goal of this section is take away key insights and pain points for people with ADHD as they reflect on their relationships with task management and focus levels. After doing empathy maps and interviews, here are my findings:
The major takeaway? Body-doubling works, but…
Many people, especially those with ADHD, struggle most with initiating tasks and sustaining focus once they begin. Starting requires an external spark (structure, presence, or motivation) while maintaining attention depends on ongoing feedback and small, dopamine-driven rewards. This highlights the need for a system that gently activates engagement at the start and continuously supports focus throughout the task. A methodology that helps users is body doubling. However, many people, especially in the context of college, school, and work, are very busy. Users often expressed that they have hard times trying to ask for someone to work/study/do tasks with them because people aren't always available.
IDEATION
In several group meetings, we discussed the the user flow and where/how to actually apply OpenAI API into our product. We wanted to us generative AI to create personas for users to body double with, each with personalities and advice that is tailored to the user who onboarded. With that, we were striving to replicate a "good and disciplined study/task buddy" that can actually help users keep focus, start tasks and complete them. After a lot of late nights, we came up with this flow.
After understanding who we wanted our product to guide users, we drew up sketches of the wireframes that we would eventually make in Figma and React.
FIRST PROTOTYPE
We worked together on creating the first prototype which we presented to our mentor, class and tested with users. I, specifically, I created the work session design and also the majority of the the interactions that allowed the flow to be tested.
ARE WE DONE? EVERYONE SATISFIED?
It's a complicated answer. We were done with the primary operation of creating an engaging, customizable, AI avatar body-doubling system. In initial testing, we received great reviews about it's operation, innovation, and function. However, several other questions remained with us and even some users when we interviewed them.
EXTENSIVE USER TESTING
After the initial prototyping, we jumped in a period of intense user testing so figure out ares of improvement. Through a user survey, our goal was to collect targeted feedback that will help us fine-tune four core areas of StudyBud:
Session-summary screens: What information and visual style feel most helpful right after a work block.
Long-term progress views: How users want to see their effort accumulate over days and weeks.
Reward mechanics: Which motivational “carrots” (e.g., evolving buddy, unlock-able scenes, streak badges) resonate and which do not.
Visual design: What character style and visual style most resonate with users.
The goal of this survey was to collect targeted feedback that will help us fine-tune four core areas of StudyBud:
While I can write out everything here, it might be better to show our full results in a organized report. Linked below are our methodology and findings:
TIME TO ITERATE!
In summary, we need to fix four core parts after testing. So our goal shifted from just creating something functional (as one of our first priorities was to implement AI) to now creating a new style that people thought was actually cute, reinforcing the reward mechanic, and updating the summary screens. Thus, we started at the beginning and iterated.
New sketches to improve and simplify the original user flow.
New sketches to improve and simplify the original user flow.
New Assets!
With a new style, I drew up new assets for the avatar, environment, rewards, and other buttons.
Second Prototype!
We redesigned the wireframes to represent the new iterations. After working on designing the work sessions and also implementing the interactions, we have our second prototype.
DESIGN SYSTEM
To align all designers on this project, I made a UI kit for StudyBud.
THE FINAL FEATURE!
After prototyping, getting feedback from mentors and users, and iterating, StudyBud is Born!
OUTCOMES
Because CS 337Q was also a research class with multiple presentations, a presentation poster was made to present our work at the design fair held at the end of the quarter. In our audience was our professor, mentors, the exports who we interviewed to better understand ADHD, and our test users.
The reaction was overwhelmingly positive with some experts reaching out to collaborate with us in the future.
TAKEAWAYS
User research is the foundation.
Throughout this process, our design would be just another task management app if not for our extensive research on how this will specifically help people with ADHD, a very focused and specific group of users and problem space. Additionally, user research was also essential in understanding and then even building a solution for a condition that none of us had. The research that we did allowed us to better empathize with users and receive better insights.
New sketches to improve and simplify the original user flow.
The design process does not have to be linear.
For the second prototype after the user survey and feedback, we realized that our original design still could benefit from a lot of improvements. While this was frustrating because we thought we were done, we were determined. This is why we extended this project build timeline past the quarter and into summer.
New sketches to improve and simplify the original user flow.
Building products 0 to 1 requires a lot of PM skills, especially in a group project
Simply put, big projects with big ambitions/ideas behind them are built faster when there's a streamlined and organized way to distribute work, view/edit timelines, hold accountability, and meet deadlines. This was even more essential during the summer when we couldn't rely on a class structure to help keep us organized.
Thanks for stopping by! Let's Chat! 💬
Let's talk design, UX research, and meaningful solution
Or email syan204@stanford.edu