Actually, yes, I have. It's something I know a fair bit about. So here's a few quick thoughts. It's very important to have a long, thoughtful discussion with the ADD/ADHD person to learn what particular challenges they face, as "ADD-heads" are as various as we all are.
There is a lot of literature, and I'd say about half of it is useful.
Maybe a third.
I'm afraid I disagree with the expert christine has cited in two particulars.
ADD/ADHD people can be just as attached to their things as anyone else is, and are actually more likely to have clutter - being unable to finish things creates a backlog, and that means stuff.
And open storage is the worst thing. Everything you can see distracts you. If the storage is open, identical storage containers, well labeled, can mitigate the problem.
For the purposes of design, I think that the three most important things to understand are these:
1. Modern life is like cable television - lots of channels competing for your attention, and you switch among them. If you have ADD or ADHD, your life is a bank of televisions, each one with a different channel, and they're all on, all the time.
So you need an environment that is uncluttered in every way - not too much pattern or stuff - and systems to put everything you are not actively doing out of sight, or you can't hold your fragile focus long enough to do anything.
2. Many people with ADD/ADHD have no innate sense of the passage of time. None. Hours, minutes, days, years, just happen at random. Anyone who lives with an ADD person knows this - off to the store to pick up milk and stop at the drug store for aspirin, and three hours later home with milk but no aspirin, and no clear idea what happened to the time.
Clocks, visible everywhere, and timers that you can set, are key. You need tools and methods to make up for that lack, just as though you were deaf, and needed hearing aids.
3. There is a phenomenon that all ADD folks will recognize - it's that moment when you are working away at something, and suddenly you HAVE to stop and go do something else. Another version of that is that routine tasks can feel endless, as if you are NEVER going to finish writing those checks or washing those dishes, and you have to GET UP and GO. It's likely related to the faulty time perception.
So it's a good idea to have more than one place to do things - one desk for finance, and another one for correspondence, for instance. Then you can escape when those moments come. It's also good to have music everywhere, because many folks find that it helps them stay in the right mood, and to keep doing whatever it is.
The overall requirement, I think, is visual quiet, and physical support for well-organized systems and routines, to make every ordinary repetitive task as easy and quick as possible.
Q
