Project Overview:
Adding a feature to medbridge website for rehabilitation therapists to track home exercise programs (HEP’s)
Medbridge is a website that helps rehabilitation therapists to make home exercise programs (HEP) which patients can access through an app.
The Problem
Rehabilitation therapists want more information about home exercises to increase accountability and suitability of exercises.
🗒 There’s no way for rehabilitation therapists to track exercises outside of the clinic
🚫 According to a study: 75% of patients don’t do their prescribed exercises
😔 The Medbridge Website currently shows irrelevant information (#log ins/date of last log in)
Solution:
Adding a feature: therapy tracker for rehabilitation therapists to monitor patient’s home exercise programs.
Problem: Only uses codes to identify patients not names.
No one could find patient information because it is under “Access Codes”
Solution: Changing “Access Codes” to “Patient info”
Added patient information input so therapist can enter name
Problem: Shows irrelevant information to patient progress & again the use of access codes
Patients referred to by “Access Codes”, making it difficult to find patients to follow up with
Solution: Visual indicator to show patient exercise completion
Humanizing patients so they are identified by name, not codes.
Solution: Provide individualized information for each patient
Interview
Busy therapists find themselves needing to oversee patients performing their Home Exercise Programs (HEP) in the clinic rather than at home.
I interviewed 5 rehabilitation therapists (physical therapist and occupational therapists) via Google Meets to understand the problem.
Insight #1
Therapists are too busy to create an HEP adherence plan.
Therapists have to see multiple patients at a time (can be 2-3). They are responsible for home exercise follow-up but do not have the time to create an adherence plan.
Insight #2
Therapists are often supervising patients do their exercise homework in clinic.
Therapists want to be providing skilled services instead of supervising.
Patients are unable to effectively progress to their recovery goals.
Insight #3
Limited information exchange
Patients sometimes forget to communicate important information for why they may not be completing their exercises (ie: going to the emergency room)
Therapists want more information to understand how patients are responding to exercises- ie: Are they completing them consistently? or overexerting themselves?
Persona
Meet Flora, a busy rehabilitation therapist, who strives to support patients in achieving their recovery goals.
However, she faces the challenge of low adherence to home exercise programs, which can impede progress.
Competitive analysis
Competitors fail to provide a detailed breakdown for each individually assigned exercise.
Weakness
They only track information based on average scores across all exercises.
Strength
The competitors are helping track home exercise programs and Medbridge is not tracking progress (they are but not well).
Competitors are tracking pain level, completion, difficulty level
Medbridge is tracking: date of last logged in and how many times app has been opened
How might we
How might we....enable therapists to see progress updates of patient exercise plans to hold them accountable to complete exercises at home?
Survey:
Conducting a survey to help determine most important information to users.
The survey revealed that therapists valued the following as the most important information. I prioritized the top 4 results:
Completion level
Perceived Effort level
Reps/ sets
Pain level
Feature Set
Discerning Key features for the minimum viable product (MVP)
With the prioritization of information from the survey, I was able to identify the must haves and identify additional features for future implementation, organizing them based on feasibility.
Zooming Out: Information Architecture
The site map was crucial to identify where the new feature will live in the existing information architecture.
Zooming in: User flow
Using the user flow to plot out how users can achieve their goal.
A user flow was used to zoom in more on where in a user's journey are they encountering the new feature and what flow will help fit in to the existing one.
Wireframes
Iterating fast and furious from sketches to midfi
Low to midfi wireframes were used to help ideate, try all the options, and choose a design direction to move towards. Especially, deciding how to display data such as showing monthly or weekly views. Or displaying the data as a bar graph or line graph.
Exercise tracker design iteration: Balancing at a glance info & Providing enough information
Pro: Shows overall exercise completion over many days at once
Con: Not specific enough for each exercise and information overload
Pro: Showing only 1 week at a time
Con: Still doesn't show the specific exercises
Pro: Breaks down exercises and what was completed of multiple exercises
Con: Information overload for the user
⭐️The Chosen one⭐️
Weekly tracker + multiple exercises
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W
Th
F
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18
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Clamshell
Supine Bridge
Supine Active
Straight ...
Exercise Tracker
Jan 18- Jan 24
Week 2
Patient dashboard: design iteration
Midfi V1
1
2
2
1
Patient name/ info and exercises: placed on left as a vertical card
Pros:
Exercsies and patient information in a card to avoid confusion that it was a menu
Cons:
It would be difficult for responsiveness , better to have everything stacked vertically
2
Week indicator: placed on both sections/ graphs
Pros:
Week in center for better visibility
Users are able to know what week each chart is on, and if you change one chart it changes another. The system will indicate that.
Cons:
It may lead user to think, each graph can view different weeks.
My intention was to show only the same week for each graph, allowing therapists to cross reference information.
Midfi V2
1
2
1
Patient name/ info and exercises: stacked vertically above content
Pros:
Better design for responsiveness because of the vertical stack vs mix of vertical and horizontal stack.
Cons:
Visually everything is placed to the left, and doesnt appear balanced
2
Week indicator: placed in only 1 section
Pros:
Added dates so users know the timeframe
Cons:
User may not know/ expect “Effort and pain level” chart will change weeks if is only in 1 chart.
⭐️ Chosen Design: Midfi V3 ⭐️
2
1
1
1
Patient name/ info and exercises : placed on top left, and exercises placed closer to tracking information
Pros:
Better design for responsiveness because it is vertically stacked
Exercise information closer to tracker
Visually- looks better (better use of space)
Accommodates for different views better (tablet/ mobile)
2
Week indicator : Combined quick stats w/ date
Pros:
1 section to represent the whole page and provide quick glance.
Better heirarchy for “Quick stats and date” to be the first section.
Usability Testing Results
Users thought the new exercise tracker feature was very helpful and easy to use
I conducted moderated usability tests with 5 participants who are rehabilitation therapists and assign home exercise programs to patients.
Tasks
Completion%
Enter Patient information and confirm entry
100%
Navigate to exercise tracker information
0%
View & understand effort and pain level
100%
Comparing different weeks on Patient Dashboard
100%
Revision #1: Hep Builder page
Task Failure: Users could NOT find the feature!! (Ahhh😱)
The original design: “Access Codes” is not a term familiar to users to find patient information
Problem: Error in Task 2: View Patient Exercise Tracker Information.
After inputting patient information and saving, users needed to click: “ Access Codes” to find the patient’s file
Users were confused by the heading “ Access codes” and did not expect to click this to get to patient information
Solution:
1
Changed navigational heading “Access Codes”to “Patient information”
Users stated they were looking for the word “patient” in the heading
Matches heading used in the HEP Builder.
2
Added “saved notification” at bottom of the page
It confirms the HEP is saved and provide navigational link to patient information
Revision #2: Effort and Pain Level Chart (Patient Dashboard Page)
Improving User understanding of what Effort/ Pain level mean with information pop up
Problem: Users were confused what “effort level” and “pain level” were measuring
They were unsure if it was for all of the exercises or a specific one.
Revision #3: Exercise Completion Chart Preference Test
(Patient Dashboard Page)
Users choose Option B: Blue & Green boxes for easier understanding
Problem: When designing the weekly exercise tracker, I was between two design options. So, I sought feedback from fellow designers.
Designers chose option A, but desired further certainty due to the impact on information access
I took it to usability testing and let users decide.
Solution:
During the preference test, participants were presented with two options:
Option A: blue colors boxes
Option B: blue & green boxes
Users chose 🎉Option B: blue & green boxes
They found it easier to comprehend the information at a quicker pace.
Check mark was removed from partially completed exercises because participants stated it made the information busy and harder to understand.
The Solution
Introducing Medbridge Patient HEP Tracker
A therapy tracker that keeps therapists in the loop and enables them to monitor patient’s home exercise programs. With this tracker, therapists can better understand their patients' experiences and provide targeted guidance for optimal outcomes.
Quick identification
Help identify patients with exercise challenges
The information assists counselors in recognizing clients experiencing difficulties and providing suitable assistance.
Quantitative information
Tracking patient exercise progress
Tracks number of exercises completed, levels of pain experienced, and the amount of perceived effort exerted.
View Figma Prototype
Key Learnings
Function over aesthetics One problem sticks out to me the most and that was deciding on the colors for the exercise tracker. During design critiques, I stated pros and cons for using 1 color vs 2 colors. I found most designers agreed with me, but when I took it to user testing … users did not.
Instead of being fixated on visual appeal, it's crucial to put functionality first and ensure that the design choices resonate with the target audience.
Moving forward, when comparing different designs, I need to weigh functionality more than visuals when comparing designs.
Next Steps
Due to time constraints and feasability, some features could not be built out, but if there was more time...
Designing a chat or note feature for patient communication:
Data from the research supports this additional feature.
Therapists wanted to see subjective information from patients. (ie: how comfortable a patient feels and if there are any notable comments and feedback)
A nudge or congratulations feature
The therapist and patient can have an interactive experience- and therapist can send nudges to do exercises or send congrats to celebrate patients.
Gamifying the home exercise experience
Allows therapists to make home exercises more fun to encourage patients to keep up with their exercises (ie: leaderboard, badges, points)
Thank you for reading!
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