Synopsis —

As an introduction project to the research components of the UX process. We were given the task to create a project based off of a single interview of a classmate. Our instructors asked us to find something within our interview to help us design an app that might be beneficial to that particular person. During my interview with Mike, I discovered that he was having difficulty with a back injury. The process of rehabilitation was proving to be difficult and quite frustrating. This was the area I chose to focus on.

Constraints —

This being the beginning of the UX design program at RED, my knowledge of UX processes was limited and I was still learning much about some of the tools available to solve these problems. We also had one week to develop the concept along with three low fidelity wireframes.

Beginning

The Challenge & Strategy —

When you are hurt the process of recovery can be daunting. It often involves multiple doctor’s appointments, trial and error, consistency with Phsyio and months of repetitive exercise. Usually with no real promise of being back to a fully functioning human being afterwards. I was challenged to take this frustrating experience and turn it into something enjoyable and rewarding.

I began by interviewing a sample audience of injured individuals and quickly discovered similar patterns. Many are training athletes, who are struggling with the balance of getting better, but not pushing themselves back to training to soon, as this usually causes re injury and doubles recovery time. The more obvious struggles discovered were lack of time, risk of re injury in day to day activities, and the difficulty of staying consistent with their physiotherapy. The most interesting to me though, was the amount of frustration with the overall pace of recovery, and defeated attitude that almost always followed. The lack of tangible results due to the slow nature of recovery took away any sense of accomplishment. I then decided this would be the way to tackle this problem, by bringing more sense of control over the situation to the recovering individual.

The Middle

Discovery & Planning —

It was clear to me that a quick recovery was the ultimate goal. My hope was by giving a sense of control and accomplishment to the individual, they would feel happier throughout the process and stick with it longer than usual with more consistency. Hopefully therefore speeding up the recovery.

I decided to define the main ways these users could feel more in control of recovery, by breaking down each frustration and gaining some insights on how one might feel if the situation was reversed. Then looking at features that would help achieve those feelings instead.

I then roughed out some flow ideas, and thought through how some features might be developed to help encourage the positive reactions.

Final Stages

Concept —

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Comeback is an app to help users who are suffering from injuries get better faster by feeling more in control of their recovery. By allowing you to easily document your progress, giving encouraging reminders and providing attainable goals — Comeback enables you to feel better while getting better, Make the process of recovering a little bit funner and eliminating the discouraging uncertainty. So you can getting back to doing the activities you love faster!

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By Helping the user track everything surrounding their injury in a more tangible and encouraging way, we can give them a sense of accomplishment, and therefore a better feeling of control over the progression of their recovery.

Next Steps —

Testing and developing flows further. While I have made some assumptions about the psychology of human feelings towards accomplishment and control here, I believe my hypothesis to be relatively true. The next steps would be to dive deeper into testing the human reaction and patterns caused by these feelings. Hopefully this would help to refine the existing features to be more impactful on the user, and improve their overall experience in recovery.