Designing an Accessible Mobile App for Patients & Clinicians to Improve Compliance and Therapy Experience
About Sunrise Labs
Sunrise Labs is a tech agency dedicated to building thoughtful healthcare. I collaborated with their client, Zavation, to bring a therapy app to market from the ground up.
The users are prescribed electrical stimulation therapy after undergoing a bone surgery. The objective of the app is to keep patients on track and motivated. The requirements included designing real-time insights, reminders, and data visualizations to enhance patient experience & compliance.
Research & Requirements Gathering
I started the design process by conducting research on apps in the market & patient needs.
Therapy apps use a lot of common trends like behavioral nudges & gamification to motivate their users. However, some of the best inspiration I found was in non direct competitors like Headspace or Duolingo. They use strong visualizations and animations to show progress and remaining sessions to be done.
I created this user journey to map out opportunities each moment of the patient’s journey, from the moment they receive their therapy device to their full recovery.
User Experience Design
During the UX design, I created wireframes to keep the discussion with the users at a feature level. I showed the sketches for behavioral nudges, milestones, countdowns and reminders.
With the client, I defined potential challenges the user may face when it comes to behavioral psychology: Adoption of a new behavior, Technology as a barrier, Premature sense of recovery, and Feeling like therapy is a chore
Since the users were undergoing non optional therapy, one of the main takeaways from this stage was to keep the features to the essential and focus on delivering the key metrics as opposed to a complex feature set for gamification.
User Interface Design
The next step in the design process was to develop a clean UI that aligns with the brand’s medical aesthetics and gave balance to the client’s bright red logo. I presented several options, and the client selected a color palette that conveys trust and calming effects to promote a positive user experience. The palette they chose was loosely inspired by the project's focus on the “bone,” visible in the off white and creamy hues.
Then, I created a design system including icons, buttons, and other graphical elements, keeping it clean and cohesive.
Data Viz, Trends & Reminders
Tracking and displaying information on the patient’s bone stimulation therapy were key objectives, so I implemented a data driven visual system that captured treatment, compliance, and progress metrics.
I also designed a reminders feature to keep users on their therapy schedule and celebrate their progress. A visual encouragement to stay on track and keep up their momentum goes a long way!
Results & Next Steps
Currently Zavation is passing the complete product through FDA regulation and will hopefully be available on the market in the next year. The delivered therapy app was successful for the client and will contribute to a more effective & enjoyable therapy experience for its users.
More information about Sunrise Labs︎︎︎ here
Please reach out for further details ︎︎︎ rachel.collins75@gmail.com
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