CASE STUDY
We’re creating a new app to help people in Physical Therapy complete their exercises at home. It would set reminders on their phone and guide them through their exercises, without the need of printed handouts.
November 2022 – February 2023
Physical therapy clients are often given a list of exercises to do at home on their own, which is necessary to complete in order to improve their injuries. However, due to forgetfulness and lack of motivation, many clients don’t finish their exercises at home.
Design a Physical Therapy app that will help users remember how to do their exercises, when to do their exercises, and keep them motivated along the way.
UX researcher and designer. Responsible for Paper and digital wireframing, low and high-fidelity prototyping, conducting usability studies, accounting for accessibility, iterating on designs and responsive design.
I interviewed 3 participants who have participated in physical therapy in the last five years. I learned that everyone had a different approach to completing their exercises at home. Some would follow the paper handoffs while others wrote down their own checklists to complete each day. Lack of motivation and no way to track progress of their injury improving seemed to be a common theme among reasons why users eventually stopped their exercises.
Making time to complete exercise routines every day is a challenge
Memory
Exercises are often given to clients on a printed handout which don’t offer visualization to clients on how to flow through an exercise. They can do the exercises incorrectly.
Motivation
Users begin to slowly stop completing their exercises on a daily basis because they are lacking motivation that they are improving.
Jared is a working male whose work and life routine changes daily and wants to be reminded to complete his physical therapy exercises so that he doesn’t forget to do them.
Persona: Jared Scenario: Be reminded to complete his physical therapy routine daily with a detailed example of each exercise. Expectations: Detailed walk thru of at home exercises Daily reminders Keep track of exercises completed Be motivated to complete physical therapy
The main navigation was adjusted after a card sort.
I started out sketching and doing Crazy Eights to quickly ideate the various screen options for the app.
Stars were used to mark the elements of each sketch that would be used in the initial digital wireframes.
Based off of the sketches, I added features that would address the obstacles that users had in completing their at home exercises.
The Physical Therapy app low-fidelity prototype
Moderated usability study
United States, remote
3 participants
8-15 minutes
2 out of 3 participants thought the menu bar on the home screen was too small/hard to read.
2 out of 3 participants thought the menu bar on the home screen was too small/hard to read.
2 out of 3 participants thought the menu bar on the home screen was too small/hard to read.
2 out of 3 participants clicked ‘Ass a routine’ instead of the … menu on the routines card, to add/edit. (The change from the previous round was not clear enough for users)
Note: I found it interesting that the ‘fix’ that I came up with, was still was not clear enough. This shows the value of getting multiple rounds of usability tests on your products.
Before usability study
After usability study
Before usability study
After usability study 1
After usability study 2
I included considerations for additional screen positions in my mockups based on my earlier wireframes. Because videos are so useful in the routine, it was essential to provide a horizontal view for a clearer view of the exercises being performed.
The Physical Therapy app High-fidelity prototype
All color combinations pass wc3 accessibility contrast guidelines
Buttons and touch points have been sized appropriately for small screen best practices in accessibility
Sections were given proper heading hierarchy to aid in guiding screen reader users
I think it's great. I normally write things on paper. I like that I would have it on my phone with me at all times and I can see my progress. - Participant T
I learned that even a small design change can have a huge impact on the user experience. The most important takeaway for me is to always focus on the real needs of the user when coming up with design ideas and solutions.
Conduct follow-up usability testing on the app
Continue to iterate on future features for the app
Contact me for any follow up questions, or for further details alexismusser@live.com, phone number, and website