Improving the lives of people with ADHD with digital body doubling

About

Social media stars, Rich & Rox from ADHD Love asked 30,000 of their 2 million followers what they struggled with the most. The overwhelming response: housework.

So, they reached out to Gravitywell to help them start building dubbii.

This native app uses a technique called body doubling, which is when you have somebody to pair with you whilst doing difficult or mundane tasks to help anchor you to the present moment and focus on the task at hand.

The idea for dubbii was digital body doubling; Rox and Rich would film themselves doing simple household tasks like making the bed, cleaning the kitchen and taking the bins out.

Process

We approached members of the ADHD community and asked them to be our Steering Group. These key users would test our mobile app from the earliest prototypes and help us to inform the direction of the project. Crucially, they validated that in-app Body Doubling worked and that our core idea had legs.

From there, we followed an iterative design & development process by adding features to complement the body doubling process whilst adhering to a set of ADHD-friendly design principles.

The result was a simple, intuitive and playful mobile app that motivates users to get started and finish their housework, without overwhelming them.

The reception has been incredible. During launch weekend the app broke the Top 20 across both stores in Productivity and Health & Fitness categories, and since has been downloaded over 300,000 times.