Junto / M:IPD grad thesis
Enabling productivity for young adults with ADHD
Jessica Chou
Ankita Diwan
Kanika Kumar
09/2024 – 05/2025
Product Design
Interaction Design
Business Strategy
AI in software & hardware
Smart technology that simplies goal management for young adults with ADHD through social accountability with trusted ones, AI-assisted task management, and minimized distraction – a system that keeps user motivated in a long term.
Rather than focus solely on design, we worked on the product strategy, business plan, and tied our design decisions to the business goal. A few milstones include winning the Wharton Innovation Fund Validation Award and getting into Wharton’s Startup Challenge as semifinalists.
Starting and acheiving long term goals are extremely difficult for young adults with ADHD
With overwhelming feelings, time blindness, difficulty with prioritization, common aspirations like securing a first job, building meaningful relationships, or pursuing professional growth often feel out of reach.
Having people around can boost productivity, but...only when the support is meaningful and personal
Social accountability can boost productivity, but only when the support is meaningful and personal.
Current solutions are isolated
$15.5 million U.S. adults have ADHD, which equals to $143 billion of societal cost annually, reflecting the magnitude of this challenge. However, no solutions (ex. task tracking, online body doubling) address the intersection of these needs — offering either isolated functionality.
A three parts ecosystem to start, focus and follow through, enabling productivity through social accountability, AI task breakdown, and minimized distraction
Turn big dream into baby steps
Keep motivated with love and support from trusted friends and family
hardware visual and app screen
Say “bye” to your phone. Follow through with a device to minimize distraction.
Competitive analysis showed that current solutions are isolated.
Interviewed and conducted focus groups with those who have tried products in the market. 70% of them said they drop-off after 1-2 weeks of trial period.
Target user:
Age: 18 – 30 years old
Profession: Students, early-mid career professionals
ADHD diagnosis: Diagosed with ADHD in adulthood, or strongly suspect
Goal: To understand people’s struggles with productivity and goal management.
Consulted experts in behaviroal science
We also received mentorship from 10+ healthcare experts (ADHD professional, therapist, etc.). They provided insights on executive dysfunction, behavioral motivation, and in-depth knowledge about productivity for ADHD individuals.
Big goal don’t motivate, they paralyze.
Starting is hard, staying motivated is harder, doing it alone makes it worse.
The brain wants to focus, but phone has other plans.
Exploring product direction and form factors
Social accountability was our strongest direction. We designed and prototyped solutions with two hypothesis:
User have strong enough system (friends, family, etc,) to help and support them along the way
User are used to voice-based interaction
Design and tested with user and their selected accountability partner to get feedback
We designed and ran a moderated 7-days user testing on WhatsApp to simulate the body doubling experience and test the social interaction
We showed V1 to our target user and asked their thoughs about the feature and how they feel about having this new tool in their life
KEY INSIGHTS