Video design challenges affect learning for people with ADHD
"It's Like Drinking from a Fire Hose": Understanding and Characterizing Video Learning Experiences for Individuals with ADHD
Human-Computer Interaction
Summary
People with ADHD often find it hard to follow video lectures because these videos can show too much information at once and last a long time. The authors studied how people with ADHD watch and think about video lessons by tracking their eye movements and asking them to explain their experience afterward. They found parts of the videos that made learning harder and observed how the viewers tried to cope. This understanding can help make better video lessons that adjust to the needs of people with ADHD.
What this means in practice
- •For e-learning platform developers: Develop video systems that adapt pacing and presentations to reduce attention overload for users with ADHD based on behavioral cues like eye movement.$Commercial implications: Enables creation of adaptive educational video platforms targeting ADHD viewers, improving user engagement and learning outcomes.
- •For instructional designers: Incorporate ADHD-friendly design elements and pacing strategies into video content to reduce cognitive load and support better focus during lessons.
Authors
Hanxiu 'Hazel' Zhu, Weiyu Zhang, Ru Wang, Yuhang Zhao
Abstract
Video lectures have become increasingly prevalent for education and professional development, yet their static visuals, dense information, and long duration pose attentional challenges for individuals with ADHD. While adaptive learning offers opportunities towards ADHD-accessible video learning, little is known about how to suitably adapt such videos: What components in multimodal video lectures are challenging for ADHD viewers? How do these experiences surface in behavioral signals to trigger an adaptation? What presentations do they prefer? To answer these questions, we conducted an eye-tracking-based retrospective think-aloud study with 16 participants with ADHD, who watched and reflected on a curated set of video lecture segments. Our study uncovered video design elements that hindered learning and revealed participants' coping strategies along with their limitations. By jointly analyzing behavioral signals and retrospective reflections, we characterized how these experiences manifested in behavioral patterns. We further surfaced participants' practices for addressing learning needs beyond the video watching process, and derived design implications for future ADHD-friendly adaptive video learning systems.