My Role

Brand Designer

Timeline

3 months

Software

Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Miro

In my senior capstone class, we were told to reflect on our life and create something that could’ve alleviated a problem we had when we were younger. For my project, I decided to focus on me discovering that I have ADHD and how my late diagnosis could’ve been avoided if my community was educated on the topic.

Project Brief

  • This diagnosis wasn’t a surprise to me at all, since I speculated that I might have it since I was in high school. I struggled to pay attention in class, my grades weren’t great, and as a result I was struggling with depression. Even after bringing it up to my parents, they didn’t believe me and thought I just “naturally struggled” in school. After bringing myself to therapy, I was then properly diagnosed with ADHD and told that I’ve had it since I was child. This diagnosis made me think of the what ifs. What if I was diagnosed when I was a child? How different would my life have turned out? Would I have had better grades?

    Thinking of the what ifs made me frustrated with how no one around me knew that I might’ve had ADHD. If only the people around me were aware and educated on it, I probably wouldn’t have been diagnosed with it in my early twenties.

In my observational research, I decided to ask my mom a series of questions to understand more on her previous knowledge of ADHD and why she didn’t think of getting me checked out to see if I have ADHD. Here’s some of the main things she said:

Understanding Immigrant Parents

“Growing up, we just thought that kids who weren’t good at paying attention were just naturally like that, nothing else”

“I had no idea it existed until you told me you thought you had it when you were in high school”

“If I was knew what ADHD was when you were a child, I would’ve gone to the doctor and got you checked out”

Now don’t get me wrong, I love my mom. She’s one of my best friends, and I was very lucky to be raised by her. Since my mom is a Gen X that immigrated from South Korea, there’s a lot of cultural differences when it came to mental health. In their generation, mental health was never talked about. So you can’t even blame that they had no idea about things like ADHD until much later.

With this, I started researching the relationship between immigrant families and ADHD. Through my research I found that:

Desktop Research

  • Children of immigrants are less likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than children with parents from the US

  • Immigrant families from a low developed country are more likely to have children with ADHD

  • There is a lack of mental and behavioral health access amongst immigrant communities, causing less diagnoses

  • Language, educational, and cultural barriers play a huge factor in children not being diagnosed with ADHD

To understand the user more, I made a customer journey along with a storyboard to see how the users would interact with the organization’s products.

YOBITSUGI, a resource offered in multiple languages to reach a wider audience

YOBITSUGI would have an online platform to educate families on ADHD. To market this organization, there would be posters and brochures placed in public. Some areas include: libraries, schools, food banks, churches, and community centers.

If the brochure and poster were together, they would be connected with the flying paper airplane. I did this to naturally guide the viewers eye to the brochure if they want to learn more. There’s also a QR code on the brochure leading to the translated copy if the parent’s native language isn’t English.