“Everyone has bad days. But when you’ve got attention deficit disorder (ADHD or ADD), it sometimes feels like the universe has conspired against you and no amount of effort or positive thinking will make a difference.”

– ADDitude Magazine Editors (ADDitude Magazine, 2022)

Increasing people’s knowledge and/or perception of ADHD can help prevent people with ADHD feeling like the universe is against them (like in the quote above), by giving the family and friends of those with ADHD the power and knowledge to sympathise with those suffering with ADHD through understanding of the condition.

Following on from the proposal, this project will focus on the subject of ADHD, with the aim to inform the audience of the condition regardless of if they suffer with the condition or if they would like to increase their knowledge on the condition.

People with the condition ADHD experience overwhelming and distracting symptoms daily, with one journal article finding links between the level of perceptual capacity of those with autism and ADHD (Irvine B. et al., 2024). They found that when faced with day-to-day tasks, both those with ADHD and those with autism had higher levels of perceptual capacity, meaning they had a tendency to retain more details than neurotypical participants, which often led to a feeling of overwhelm and disengagement.

If there is a link in terms of perceptual capacity and the feeling of overwhelm in both ADHD and autism, educating people on ADHD could also be beneficial to those with other conditions, such as autism.

The aims of this project will be met using a combination of assets such as website creation, animation and a social media campaign. The animation, social media campaigns and still images will be used as a tool to encourage users to visit and engage with the website.

Fig 1. Flow chart that represents how the assets will compliment each other to encourage website visits and engagement.

The development of this project will be displayed in the Development Log section of the menu, with the following categories:

Introduction
Audience and Competitor Analysis
Synthesis of Research and Digital Platforms
Alterations to Initial Concept and Congregation of Content Based on Research
Web Creation
Website Animation and ADHD Simulator
Social Media Creation and Advertising
Sound
Future Work and Reflection

The final product will be displayed in the Practical Work folder in the format of a ten minute video with narration.

Considerations for the project

Without ethics approval, the content created will not be able to be made live to the public and analysed, to ensure the safety of those who are vulnerable who may access the content. The content and assets created in this project will remain on the WordPress site, provided by the university, accessed only by teaching staff and students on the Graphic Design course.

Reference list

ADDitude Magazine (2022). ADHD Quotes: 15 Inspirational Famous Quotations. [online] www.additudemag.com. Available at: https://www.additudemag.com/slideshows/adhd-famous-quotes-for-a-bad-day/#:~:text=Everyone%20has%20bad%20days. [Accessed 17 Apr. 2024].

Irvine, B., Elise, F., Brinkert, J., Poole, D., Farran, E.K., Milne, E., Gaia Scerif, Crane, L. and Remington, A. (2024). ‘A storm of post-it notes’: Experiences of perceptual capacity in autism and ADHD. Neurodiversity, 2. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/27546330241229004.