"Not Just Me and My To-Do List": Understanding Challenges of Task Management for Adults with ADHD and the Need for AI-Augmented Social Scaffolds

TL;DR

This study explores the relational and emotional challenges adults with ADHD face in task management and proposes AI-augmented social scaffolds to better support their unique needs.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into socially and emotionally scaffolded task management and offers design implications for AI systems supporting co-regulation in adults with ADHD.

Findings

Task management is relationally and emotionally co-constructed among adults with ADHD.

Socially-aware AI can support co-regulation and nonlinear attention rhythms.

Participants valued AI features that enhance social and emotional support.

Abstract

Adults with ADHD often face challenges with task management, not due to a lack of willpower, but because of emotional and relational misalignments between cognitive needs and normative infrastructures. Existing productivity tools, designed for neurotypical users, often assume consistent self-regulation and linear time, overlooking these differences. We conducted 22 semi-structured interviews with ADHD-identifying adults, exploring their challenges in task management and their coping mechanisms through socially and emotionally scaffolded strategies. Building on these insights, we conducted a follow-up speed dating study with 20 additional ADHD-identifying adults, focusing on 13 speculative design concepts that leverage AI for task support. Our findings reveal that task management among adults with ADHD is relationally and affectively co-constructed, rather than an isolated individual act. Overall, we provide (1) empirical insights into distributed and emotionally scaffolded task management practices, (2) design implications for socially-aware AI systems that support co-regulation and nonlinear attention rhythms, and (3)an analysis of user preferences for different AI design concepts, clarifying which features were most valued and why.