Looking around: comparing saccades and fixations among designers with and without ADHD

Engineering design tasks are cognitively complex and there is a growing interest in understanding the neurocognitive processes involved in design. Consequently, researchers are increasingly using bio-physical markers such as eye tracking to study design neurocognition. However, these studies are largely correlational, and little is understood about the construct validity of eye-tracking metrics such as fixation durations and saccade frequency. Moreover, these studies rarely account for non-design factors such as neurodivergence (e.g., ADHD) on eye-tracking metrics during design. We aim to examine this research gap through a causal-comparative study with designers with and without ADHD, performing divergent and convergent design tasks. Our findings call for a deeper investigation into the construct validity of eye-tracking metrics while considering a broad range of external factors.