When users pain points are actual pain
Utilizing the UX process to move on from paper pamphlets in medicine
Our UX team explored physical therapy as a problem space for a two week design sprint in June of 2019.
THE CHALLENGE— EXPLORING THE PAIN AND DISCOMFORT AROUND PHYSICAL THERAPY
As a UX team, our high level goals were:
- Discover and communicate key insights from research
- From research insights design an interactive MVP for stakeholder presentation
- Explore possible business partnerships within the problem space
MY ROLE — DESIGN, GROUP FACILITATION, AND STAKEHOLDER BUY IN
For this project, I was working with two team members, Michael and Lina. Michael primarily handled the research side while Lina and myself divided up design duties. Our project timeline was to complete a design sprint and gather our findings to prepare for a presentation to stakeholders that was scheduled for exactly two weeks from our project start date.
KICKOFF —RESEARCH SCOPE
Within physical therapy there are two subjects: the therapist and the patient. For this design sprint, our team align on focusing on the patients as we felt there was opportunity to explore and build that persona within the timeline of the project. The process of physical therapy involved multiple physical and digital steps, where can we have the biggest impact?
We kept the therapist in mind throughout this process as a possible second primary persona to explore in next steps.
USER RESEARCH — TELL ME ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE IN PHYSICAL THERAPY.
In research, our first steps were to screen for potential interview subjects. Our team wanted to speak with people that had been in physical therapy within the last 5 years so the experience was more fresh in their minds and relevant to the current landscape of therapy. User interviews were crucial as we needed to gather qualitative data around peoples experiences during treatment.
The screener lead us to 5 interviews: 3 male, 2 female. Our researchers asked questions specifically around peoples experience receiving physical therapy. Through affinity mapping we synthesized our research from interviews and identified 2 clear trends:
- 5/5 people were prescribed exercises by their physical therapist on pieces of paper (printouts and photocopies) to be completed after their physical therapy sessions
- 4/5 people at one point felt confused or frustrated by how to complete the between session exercise recommendations.
PERSONA BUILDING
Our two research trends directly fed into our persona building. Our persona, Luke, was 27 years old and recovering from an injury through physical therapy.
Luke’s goals were to make a full recovery and return back to his preferred physical activities (ie running, recreational sports) and also to alleviate pain and discomfort.
Luke’s needs centered on understanding these post session exercises or tasks prescribed by their physical therapist. His pain points were that these exercises were difficult to follow and understand.
“I got discouraged when I couldn’t understand what the exercise pamphlet was telling me to do” — User Interview
This pain point directly lead to our problem statement, which helped our team understand possible solutions for Luke.
How might we help Luke adhere to his post session exercises to reach his goal of recovering from an injury?
OUR USERS JOURNEY THROUGH THERAPY
The next step was for our team to identify clear opportunities to help Luke. We also needed to understand the context of Luke’s pain points to determine what platform we should be designing for.
Our team mapped out Luke’s journey through receiving physical therapy. The main opportunities we identified were when Luke was at home trying to complete the post session exercises prescribed by his physical therapist.
Again, these exercises have been provided to Luke in paper form. The poorly photocopied diagrams are not clear and the written instructions are confusing. Luke gets frustrated and eventually gives up, not motivated to complete these exercises which hinders his recovery.
Reiterating our problem statement, we connected our opportunities from our user journey to be sure they still solved Luke’s problem.
How might we help Luke adhere to his post session exercises to reach his goal of recovering from an injury?
Bringing in opportunities from mapping Luke’s journey:
- Clear instructions on exercises to do outside of sessions
- Motivation to complete exercises outside of sessions
It was important for our team to be constantly reminding of our problem statement to insure our opportunities still connected to solutions for Luke’s pain points and needs.
DESIGN PHASE, DESIGNING THE PRODUCT RIGHT
With our problem statement and opportunities clearly defined, the team starting exploring possible solutions. From user interviews, we identified that the majority of people completed post session exercises either at home or at the gym. For this reason it made sense to design an iOS app, giving users flexibility to complete their exercises in the space that was most comfortable to them. Our team aligned in naming our application “Remedy” as it was appropriate to our problem space.
“You’re trying to interpret motion from something that’s not built to show motion [exercise paper]. It’s like interpreting another language” — User Interview
This quote from a user interview helped inform possible solutions. We decided as a team through MoSCoW mapping that a video content feature that clearly showed users how to perform exercises was absolutely necessary for our MVP. Our app would also require a dual login so the therapist could upload exercises tailored to the user or patient. This would solve our users problem by giving them clear instructions on how to perform their post session exercises. If the exercises are clear and easy to understand, users will be more motivated to complete them (our team noted to explore addition motivation features for next steps).
Design studio and dot voting helped us clarify our vision for what the feature would look like. Upon completion of the design studio, Lina and myself had rough sketches from our team to help build out our digital wireframes.
On the top left (1) is our exercise list screen, the top right (2) is the screen where the actual video content lives for a specific exercise. The bottom left (3) is our screen for users to submit how they’re feeling to their physical therapist while the bottom right (4) screen is an overlay that appears once they’ve either completed their workout or submitted feedback. The overlay reminds the user of their next physical therapy appointment. All screens incorporate small aspects from our design studio dot voting.
In terms of user flow, our team aligned on designing the above 4 screens: an exercise list that would populated by the physical therapist, a screen where the actual video content feature explaining the exercise would live, a screen to have the user submit feedback to their physical about how they’re feeling, and an overlay that would appear upon completion, showing when the users next appointment is.
We conducted usability testing on our mid-fi wireframes. Users tested were given two tasks:
- Task 1: You’re at home, completely your physical therapy exercises.
- Task 2: Record how you feel after your exercises.
Results from the testing showed that users understood the basic function of our app and were able to successfully complete their prescribed exercises. We made minor adjustments around our designs to clarify features users had minor issues with. This included our exercise time, which users did not understand as the total time to complete the prescribed exercises. We also clarified the language on our submit feedback screens so users understood where the feedback was going (to their therapist).
Our team moved on to finalizing our hi-fi mocks up next to use for our stakeholder presentation.
POSSIBLE PARTNERSHIPS
At this stage of the sprint we also wanted to explore possible partnerships with Remedy. User research revealed that 4/5 people interviewed used ZocDoc to research and set up appointments with their physical therapist.
ZocDoc is a platform that helps users connect with medical professionals and set up appointment times in one convenient location. Doctors benefit from ZocDoc as it allows them the ability to showcase their practice and connect with patients. Users benefit from ZocDoc as it allows them to easily connect with and review potential medical professionals. If a physical therapist uses Remedy, the concept was that it would benefit their practice to make this clear on their ZocDoc profile.
Due to time constraints, the ZocDoc/Remedy partnership feature was not tested. As part of next steps this partnership and feature should be explored more on both the business and UX design fronts as to how it should be implemented on ZocDoc’s platform.
NEXT STEPS
Additional next steps include researching physical therapists as our secondary persona, as this app requires participation from them as well. We need to develop a persona for the physical therapist to make sure we also design a product that fits their needs and goals. At the end of the day, physical therapists could potentially be our biggest cheerleaders and need to love using our product in order for it to be successful.
Further next steps also include developing our dual login feature so the therapist can populate the patients exercise list, this also requires research into our secondary persona. Our team also wanted to explore more how we can develop our features around motivating the primary persona, ensuring they develop positive habits around completing their post sessions exercises and using Remedy to do so.
