FocusView: Understanding and Customizing Informational Video Watching Experiences for Viewers with ADHD

TL;DR

This paper introduces FocusView, a video customization tool designed to help viewers with ADHD improve focus by reducing distractions, supported by a user study revealing diverse perceptions and customization preferences among participants.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel video customization interface tailored for viewers with ADHD and provides insights into their specific needs and preferences.

Findings

FocusView significantly reduced video distractions for participants.

Participants had diverse perceptions of video elements as distractions or stimulants.

Design considerations for ADHD-friendly video interfaces were identified.

Abstract

While videos have become increasingly prevalent in delivering information across different educational and professional contexts, individuals with ADHD often face attention challenges when watching informational videos due to the dynamic, multimodal, yet potentially distracting video elements. To understand and address this critical challenge, we designed FocusView, a video customization interface that allows viewers with ADHD to customize informational videos from different aspects. We evaluated FocusView with 12 participants with ADHD and found that FocusView significantly improved the viewability of videos by reducing distractions. Through the study, we uncovered participants' diverse perceptions of video distractions (e.g., background music as a distraction vs. stimulation boost) and their customization preferences, highlighting unique ADHD-relevant needs in designing video customization interfaces (e.g., reducing the number of options to avoid distraction caused by customization itself). We further derived design considerations for future video customization systems for the ADHD community.