OneStep is an app that uses smartphone sensors and turns them into a health monitor for physical therapy patients
Ui ux
application design
users research
case study
Team & Role
I joined OneStep at the end of 2019 as the first and only UX UI designer in the team at the very early stages of the product, it was a great experience working closely with the founders and developers to create the product almost from scratch.
The problem
Physical therapy patients have too little feedback on their performance between the sessions with the physical therapist.
Traditional Physical Therapy doesn’t work as well as it could
Users research
On the first few weeks at OneStep I spent a lot of time on FB groups of stroke survivors and rehabilitation patients, interviewed family members and physical therapists in order to try and understand their struggle.
One way to reach them was a survey I created and posted on relevant groups.
This was my message:
Hello,
I am Lital and I recently started working with a team on creating a digital tool that helps with physical therapy from home. We want to understand what PT patients feel is the biggest challenge that’s preventing them from achieving their physical therapy goals. I would love to hear your answers.
I created a quick anonymous survey in order to understand your personal experiences regarding the rehabilitation process.
Thanks so much.
Here are some of the results:
what did we learn?
Traditional PT poses major barriers for most patients.
The current model for in-person physical therapy is failing. Therapists don’t know whether a patient is improving or digressing outside of clinic hours. Patients lose hope because they too have no quantifiable way to measure progress. Plus, it’s expensive. Insurance providers will only cover up to 10 sessions on average - and there is almost always a co-pay of $50-$75 (on average) per session
Inaccessible
not 24/7
unmeasurable feedback
expensive
Thanks to the technology we developed, the product provides the patient with customized feedback based on their performance, which allows them to know how they progress, empowers them, and creates a better rehabilitation thanks to better practice.
The patients record their walk with their phone in the pocket and get a full analysis of their walk (very much like a gait lab which is very inaccessible to most patients).
The target audience for the product is very varied since a lot of people need physical therapy at different stages of their life, but naturally, a lot of our users are mostly elderly. This is why I tried to create a UI that is very simple, bright, clean and clear and can fit different people and personas.
This is our very first walk summary page showing different measures of the patient's walk.
All the measures extracted from a patients walk
my activity
We distinguished between two different types of walk recordings: one is the In app activity in which the user actively records a walk and a background activity which is passively recorded in the background while the user is walking in his day to day life. We wanted to allow the user to see if there was a difference between walks that are mindfully recorded and between random walks that the patient does.
In App activity screen
Background activity screen
In App activity screen - empty state
Background activity screen - empty state
A PT that we have worked with told us about a stroke patient of his that walked very good while in the clinic but he could see from her background recordings that when she was walking a little faster and her step rate increased (for example when she was in a hurry to pick up her kids from kindergarten) it had a bad influence on her other measures. This way he could give her feedback on her day to day activity and help her progress better than just in a weekly short session.
my progress
The progress screens show the patient’s average performance over time
the therapists dashboard
The dashboard is a separate product built in order to connect the therapists with their patients and allows them to view their performance
The patients page shows all patients and succinct information the therapist can quickly overview. Such as his recent average measures and when he recorded walks.
The patient's activity page shows all their recorded walks with metadata and more detailed data with the opening of the dropdown.
So we now had the technology that worked pretty good, we were able to record a patient's walk and provide an analysis, but that wasn't enough, we wanted to be more than just a measuring tool!
Healthy steps
Healthy Steps are defined as steps that meet the measures that are personalized for you. Every step that meets the necessary measurements is considered a Healthy Step.
We wanted to encourage people to take as many steps as possible and to be more mindful about their walk with OneStep so we created the healthy steps counter. Our app counted how many ‘good (healthy) steps’ a person took out of all his steps.
The home page
The home page (empty state)
We saw that people downloaded the app, and sometimes did not even record a walk or set any goals. They didn’t set any goals because they didn’t know what goals to set… according to who? To themselves? To healthy people?
This is our very first onboarding that was more of an introduction, sign in/up, some personal information and a few screens showing the benefits of the product.
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The onboarding
We decided to change the onboarding and use it to introduce the product and let the user experience it for the first time,
We created a walking tutorial with a wizard called Peddy the bear
The new onboarding flow
Our objectives in the onboarding were:
1) To help the new user understand the benefits of the product by sensing it
2) Give immediate feedback and create an 'aha moment' (understanding what this product is all about)
3) Get him to experience the walk record flow
4) Get to know him and his walk by adding a few questions about him
5) Set custom goals according to the patient's performance
6) Make the user more engaged
Now we saw that around 80% of all new users went through the onboarding, recorded a walk, and answered the questionnaire and set goals!
The walk summary page
Some of the users' feedbacks after seeing their walk summary page with their results were: "Is this good?"
They wanted to know if their performance was 'good' or 'bad' but in comparison to what? To healthy people or themselves?
A tag showing if the personal goal was achieved to add a touch of gamification.
Healthy range bar showing where your result is in comparison to healthy averages.
Meta data about the walk
These changes made a significent impact on the product,
but wanted the patients to keep recording on a daily basis,
we wanted them to form a habit with one step.
push notifications
The notifications reminders aim to make the user more engaged with the healing process. It's a known fact that in order to get better with the therapy - practicing is very important. We learned from our research that many patients struggle with procrastination, and mentioned that one of the things that prevent them from practicing is that they have no one to motivate them.
insights & tips
We wanted to create a rewarding and surprising feeling to each time you record a walk, in order to encourage patients to record more walks. So we added insights. Every time you finish a walk you get an interesting insight or tip about your performance and once in every few days you get insight on your general progress.
And then,
Covid 19
People were hardly going out of their homes because of quarantine, and a lot of people did not get the physical therapy they so much needed! We realized we needed to react fast to the needs of people in such delicate situations, so we created the exercises area with a suitable program for each patient that our in-house therapist customised for them using the data we generated from their walks records combined with video sessions.
summing up
The combination of data from the recorded walks, online sessions with OneStep's physical therapists and the ongoing feedback creates a unique synergy that provides the patients with a holistic treatment and a supporting process for rehabilitation.