This study aims to embody a mindfulness-based approach to design research inquiry with ADHD Women. So that we may explore its potential to enrich both the research experience itself, and generate insights that can shape foundational components of healthcare experience design.

Future healthcare envisions “patient empowerment” driven by health tracking and “self-management” technologies. Within this purview, ADHD Women present an entanglement of healthcare design challenges. Themes of gendered diagnostic data, accessibility issues, and potential challenges with design participation offer abundant opportunities to frustrate the research, design and development process. The study seeks to enter this space, by creating an empathetic design research pathway, in which to mindfully explore diagnostic perceptions.

The mindfulness paradigm is defined here, as the cultivation of awareness, compassion and right action. Clinical trials have evidenced long-term positive impacts of mindfulness training on symptoms and general well-being in the ADHD community. The study aims to build on this success, by exploring how mindfulness praxes may be introduced into a group design setting. So that ADHD Women may be mindfully supported to create insights that inform future diagnostic support solutions.

Six women will be invited to participate in online workshops, to investigate current ‘lived experiences’ of female ADHD diagnosis in Scotland. In doing so, contributions will be made to the fields of healthcare design research and the ADHD community.