PhysiPlay

PhysiPlay is an online platform for physiotherapists to create personalised exercise programs efficiently and manage their patients’ treatment programs. PhysiPlay’s user app supports children’s health and wellbeing by motivating young patients to complete their prescribed exercises.

Timeframe:

Jan - Mar 2024 (6 weeks, Capstone Project for my 12 week full-time UX UI Bootcamp with Experience Haus)

My role in our team of 3 designers:

UX UI Designer (User Research, Screener Surveys, Interviews, Affinity Mapping, Key Insights, Competitor Analysis, Customer Personas, User Flows, Wireframes, Prototyping, User Testing, Client Presentation)

Tools used:

Google Workspace, Slack, Zoom, Rev.ai, Figma, FigJam, Pen and Paper, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Firefly, Canva

Getting to know our client

The background

PhysiPlay was founded by Sophie McCloskey, a specialist children's physiotherapist, and Jamie McGowan, a senior research scientist in an AI tech company, with the aim of creating a more inclusive and accessible healthcare platform for children with complex needs and disabilities.

PhysiPlay’s mission is to improve the lives of young physiotherapy patients by supporting their health and wellbeing. At the same time PhysiPlay wishes to enable busy paediatric physiotherapists to provide better care to their patients by optimising their current work flow and processes.

How can we help PhysiPlay?

The design challenge

PhysiPlay wishes to launch two integrated digital products to address the existing software limitations for both clinicians and patients. Our brief encompassed two sections:

1. Design an online platform that helps physiotherapists prescribe personalised treatment, manage patients’ programs, and monitor their progress more efficiently.

2. Create an MVP user app that supports children with various physical and learning needs on their physiotherapy journey, to help improve their overall health and well-being.

One key consideration was to keep inclusivity and accessibility at the forefront of all of our design efforts.

Who should we be designing for?

Our target audience

Our customers:

Physiotherapists (public and private practitioners) treating children with various physical disabilities and/or complex learning needs.

PhysiPlay is aiming to streamline and enhance the workflow when prescribing exercise programs and monitoring patient adherence and performance.

Our users:

Children (with adult guidance): PhysiPlay would make physiotherapy fun and motivating, empowering children of all ages and abilities to take an active role in managing their health.

Parents / Guardians: PhysiPlay would ease the burden on parents, with an engaging interface that reduces the need for constant motivation

Educational staff / Carers: PhysiPlay would be a valuable tool for teachers and carer givers involved in a child's daily routine including their physiotherapy.

What’s the potential impact?

Key facts

🧑🏿‍🦯 In the UK about 1 in 5 people have a disability, and 1 in 10 disabled people have complex needs

👨🏽‍🦽 The number of people with complex disabilities in the UK is projected to rise to 2 million by 2029

👩🏻‍⚕️ Physiotherapy supports people living with a disability to increase or maintain mobility, regain balance and strength, improve mental and social well-being, improve posture, participate in various activities etc.

Learning about our users

Diving into discovery

As everything in the design brief was very unfamiliar to us, we created a comprehensive research plan to maximise all learning opportunities related to the project.

Our research approach:

STAKEHOLDER MEETING

An initial in-person meeting with the stakeholder was arranged promptly upon receiving the brief.

We wanted to understand the founder’s own challenges as a children’s physiotherapist, her own goals and motivations, and find the best way to reach users or professional bodies that might share our screener surveys with clinicians.

Her focus on inclusivity and accessibility became our guiding compass for this project.

SURVEYS

Our user research started with creating two different surveys and sharing them with our networks:

Physiotherapists working with young patients aged 0-19

  • Our survey was circulated mainly via APCP (Association of Paediatric Chartered Physiotherapists) to its members, but also on LinkedIn and in specialist FB groups

  • With a great number of clinicians treating children with SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities), we were quickly able to find physios to interview further, and their specialist knowledge was key in researching a product aimed at children with disabilities

  • - Only 30% use a digital tool to prescribe exercise, the rest being a mix of methods such as paper print-outs, verbal instructions, or a combination of these

    - Clinicians' main challenges: patients are not motivated to complete the exercises, their parents and carers are not always able to support patients, or the print-out gets lost

Parents, carers and teachers supporting patients on their physio journey

  • We had some difficulty in getting enough parents of SEND children who have physiotherapy long term to fill out our survey and agree to an interview.

    This is why we decided to broaden our search and create a third survey for parents of children with learning difficulties, looking for similarities in their challenges, and in the way they motivate their children / what works in terms of rewards.

    Our survey was primarily distributed via parent WhatsApp and Facebook groups.

  • In the end our physiotherapist stakeholder also shared the survey with the parents at her special needs school, and eventually we had a total of 30 respondents combined between the three categories.

  • - Most popular ways to motivate children to do physio: making the activity fun, turning it into a game, providing support and encouragement, doing physio with them, and offering a little reward at the end

    - Main challenges faced by parents and carers: children lacking motivation to complete the exercises, difficulty in remembering what to do, and feeling unable to support the child effectively

USER INTERVIEWS

Who did we speak to?

PHYSIOTHERAPISTS INTERVIEWS

Our research objectives

  • Understand how paediatric physiotherapists currently treat and work with young patients

  • Learn a bit more about physiotherapy and its specific processes

  • What are clinicians' main goals, needs and objectives related to prescribing physio exercises to children

  • What are the physios’ main pain points and frustrations related to their work

Main insights from our interviews

  • Personalisation of prescribed programs can impact on adherence - existing physio materials are not always inclusive and can make patients feel disconnected

  • Those who function at a younger cognitive level feel more motivated when it’s disguised as a fun activity or game, where as teenagers respond better to goal-setting related to activities they love to do.

  • The current process is time consuming and labour intensive for paediatric physiotherapists, and existing methods and processes are adding to this

PARENTS, CARERS AND TEACHERS INTERVIEWS

Our research objectives

  • How is physio incorporated in the daily lives of the children they look after

  • What are their ways to motivate children, any rewards they use to incentivise completion of physiotherapy programs

  • Challenges and pain points each group experiences when supporting children with physiotherapy

  • Are there any other digital tools they use with their children, either for other physical activities or for learning purposes

Main insights from our interviews

  • Children with complex needs are more motivated to do their physio when they make it all about fun and games

  • Young patients feel more engaged with their physiotherapy when they're supported and given encouragement

  • In the case of children with disabilities, caring for them sometimes becomes a full-time job for most parents and time is always an issue

  • None of these respondents used an app for children’s physiotherapy nor were aware of any out there

INDEPENDENT ONLINE RESEARCH

In parallel with our interviews, we also researched different guidelines, best practice and resources related to accessibility and inclusivity on the Internet.

  • SCOPE (leading charity that campaigns for equality for disabled people) and their Equality, Diversity and Inclusion strategy

  • SENSE’s strategy (charity supporting the deafblind and people with complex disabilities)

  • Digital accessibility guidelines (WCAG) for making web content more accessible to people with auditory, physical, speech, visual and cognitive disabilities

  • Recommendations from design industry leaders like Medium and NN Group

  • HSBC Inclusivity resources

SPECIAL NEEDS SCHOOL VISIT (that didn’t go according to plan)

As part of our research, we also wanted to meet children in a special school, as well as their physios and teachers. We had an initial conversation with the headmaster of an institution in London, submitted a detailed research visit request and supporting documents from Experience Haus. However due to DBS requirements, data protection issues, and a short timeframe to organise it, we had to drop this plan.

💡However at this point we were able to contact and interview one adult physiotherapy patient with complex disabilities (who has cerebral palsy and is a wheelchair user). As she has had physio all her life, she was able to reflect back and share her own childhood experience with it, which proved to be extremely insightful.

What else is out there?

Gathering inspiration

In order to get a greater understanding of what other similar tools and platforms exist on the market at the moment, we continued our research with a thorough competitor analysis.

DIRECT COMPETITORS

First we looked at the most popular physio prescription apps and software assessing different features.

In the process we could not find a single one specialised in children’s physiotherapy (even more so in paediatric physio for children with complex neurological needs), which makes it a great opportunity for PhysiPlay.

INDIRECT COMPETITORS

For our PhysiPlay children’s app we couldn’t find anything that is physio focused for young patients.

This is why we then researched different platforms that either help children with certain learning disabilities develop their knowledge or memorise things in a fun way, either have great gamification elements to boost motivation.

💡A great finding was the fact that highly targeted apps (those designed to help children with dyslexia, ADHD, speech therapy problems, physical movement issues) seem to do very well in terms of adoption from parents and specialists, and have potential to become market leaders in their respective fields.

Finally, with our client brief in mind (focused on inclusivity and accessibility), we analysed some physio apps in more detail and found that none of them has a good representation / diversity of models in terms of age, race, disability etc. nor offer certain accessibility settings.

Further insights from the competitive landscape

  • AI is not widely present in competitor apps yet, but some of them do use it for new exercises suggestions

  • Majority of physio prescription tools are aimed at MSK patients with short term issues, and they’re less helpful for treating long term patients suffering from neurological conditions

  • All platforms have a library of exercises available to physiotherapists, and a few of them offer templates that can be tweaked, or the option to add your own exercise

  • Monitoring patient progress and the option to provide feedback after each session is a must for such tools

Embracing empathy

Breathing life into our user personas

Our in-depth research uncovered our three main users categories, which we then analysed in more detail by creating three distinct personas.

Meet Nadia Clarke, our physiotherapist

Who is Nadia?

  • An experienced paediatric physiotherapist with over 10 years experience, working in an NHS hospital and in special schools

  • Treats a variety of patients with MSK and neurological issues

  • Always juggles a busy schedule, but loves her job and wants to look after all her patients

The problem Nadia faces:

Prescribing personalised exercise, which is paramount for patients’ motivation & adherence, is time consuming and labour intensive for her, and the current tools and wieldy processes are a main contributor to this.

“Families are already dealing with the trauma of their child not developing as fast as they want, or having complex needs, so giving them photos of a really tiny baby doing the physio activity accentuates the gap more.”

Meet Romesh Patel, our parent

Who is Romesh?

  • Lives with his family in South London. He’s the father of a disabled 7 year old boy with complex needs called Nish

  • He is an SEO consultant working in the City, in a part-time role since the birth of his child, as he is now sharing caring responsibilities with his wife

  • One of his duties is to support his son Nish with his physio programs at home

The problem Romesh faces:

As a parent, he is often unsure about how to best support his child with his physio programs. He worries about doing things wrong, instructions aren’t always clear enough, print-outs from the physiotherapist can get misplaced too.

Motivating his child is always a challenge and he needs to find ways to turn prescribed exercises into play and games.

“If it's boring and he does not understand why you need to do physio, he’s not motivated to do it. So I always try to cheer him up and take his mind off the fact that it’s physio and it needs to be done.”

Meet Nish Patel, our child patient

Who is Nish?

  • He is 7 year old boy with complex needs functioning at a cognitive level of 5. Attends a special school in London.

  • Born with cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair. He has had physiotherapy since he was a baby, and needs to do it consistently to build up his muscle strength.

  • Has physio at school and needs to carry on at home too, assisted by his dad Romesh

The problem Nish faces:

As a young patient with complex needs, Nish can feel disconnected from his physiotherapy programs due to lack of personalisation, which may also lead to feelings of isolation.

It’s often difficult for him to stay motivated when physio feels more like a chore than a fun, exciting activity. He would rather play with other children, than do exercises on his own a few times a day.

“As a young child receiving physiotherapy, I was instantly put off because it was a medicalised thing. I used to be taken out of my lessons to a separate room to have these sessions on my own. Physiotherapy to me was like a medical intervention” (Fiona, adult patient with cerebral palsy about her experience with physiotherapy as a child).

Uncovering our users’ journeys

Putting ourselves in their shoes

In order to empathise with our personas even more, I created some experience maps focused on these key moments in their daily routines:

Scenario: Nadia the physiotherapist visits Nish at his special school, and after doing the physio with him decides to update his exercise prescription using the current tools

Scenario: Romesh, who looks after his son’s physiotherapy at home, tries to support Nish to complete his prescribed sets using the print-out given by Nadia

What hurdles do they face?

Framing our users’ problems

Paediatric physiotherapists struggle with the existing physio resources when prescribing exercises to children with complex needs, parents are often unsure about how to best support their children with their physiotherapy programs, and young physiotherapy patients don’t engage or adhere to their prescribed programs due to a lack of personalisation to their needs.

PhysiPlay needs to find a way to make physiotherapy inclusive, engaging, and fun every day for children with complex needs, while also helping parents support their children through the process. At the same time PhysiPlay must offer an intuitive, easy to use platform to help clinicians prescribe tailored exercise to young patients.

How could we help our story heroes Nish, Romesh and Nadia?

Ideating impactful solutions

CLIENT WORKSHOP

Following our user research phase, we arranged a stakeholder catch-up meeting to run the founders through our findings to date, to workshop the anatomy of a physiotherapy consultation, and ensure we have understood the specifics of prescribing exercise to a young patient, before progressing to the ideation phase.

MIND MAPPING PHYSIOTHERAPY

We also shared a mind map we created around the concept of Physiotherapy with the stakeholder, to help us evaluate a few ideas and clarify some lesser known aspects before diving into the next phase.

BRAINSTORMING APP FEATURES

Then we started to brainstorm ways to make a children’s physiotherapy app more accessible and inclusive, by compiling a list of helpful features mentioned by users in our interviews.

We also decided to create a list of must-have features to make the children’s app engaging and fun, before jumping into sketching out our first user flows for the new platform.

SKETCHING OUR USER FLOWS

Finally our team agreed on the final user flows and screens to be designed, which we then started digitising in our low fidelity and high fidelity prototypes.

Bringing our vision to life

Wireframes and prototype

First steps

After many pen & paper sketches, lots of individual and group ideation, and passionate discussions about different features and flows, in the end the clinician platform and the children & parent app became an amalgamation of all our individual ideas and designs.

At this point we split the UI work into 3 sections, each team member designing one of the following: the parent-child onboarding flow, the physiotherapist dashboard, and the children’s game.

At the same time we agreed on our branding elements to ensure visual consistency across all sections of this project.

Low fidelity screens for parent onboarding process

Low fidelity screens for children app

Low fidelity screens for physiotherapist app

Brand guidelines

Colour palette

We decided to choose a trio of colours that would reinforce the company’s mission and the values PhysiPlay stands for:

  • Blue - associated with enthusiasm, empathy, trust, authority. Evokes positive emotions such as compassion, sincerity, confidence and conveys a sense of dependability.

  • Purple - symbolises strength and determination. Its shades of plum can stimulate senses, encourage creativity and imagination, which was ideal for the children’s game section in particular

  • Turquoise - evokes clarity of thought and communication. It’s an inspiring colour associated with recharging the spirit and replenishing energy levels. It has a calming effect, evoking a sense of tranquility and peace

Typography

The font family we chose was Poppins, as it conveys a playful, modern, natural yet professional message.

Moreover, the Poppins font is highly endorsed for accessibility-focused projects. With its simplicity, rounded letterforms and even spacing, it’s a great choice for users with diverse reading abilities, dyslexic or with other cognitive issues.

Imagery

This was a unanimous decision from the start - all visuals used across our designs would be about diversity and inclusivity, showing patients of all ages, ethnicities, disabilities etc. in order to make the physio experience more personal and engaging.

As image libraries were massively lacking such resources, I had to use generative AI for the entire project, which only reinforced the problem physiotherapists mentioned so often in our user interviews.

Tone of voice:

Physiotherapists’ app and Parents’ section: professional, conversational, informative

Children’s game: fun, engaging, friendly and supportive

Finished product

What did our users say about PhysiPlay?

User testing insights

Physiotherapists’ feedback

  • Found our proposed pre-consultation sign-up of the patient very useful

  • Suggested simplifying the parent feedback feature (addressed)

  • Thought it’s be useful to be notified when a patient is behind with their physio (addressed)

  • Really liked the digital stickers idea to reward patients

  • Said the children app also looks ‘really cool, really motivating!’

Patient feedback

  • Loved the virtual companion guiding the child to get their physio completed and done correctly

  • Really liked the diverse people in the onboarding screens

  • Loved the motion tracking to aid the patient’s exercise, calling it ‘a genius idea’ as ‘nobody else is currently doing this’

  • Suggested a community element (we proposed it in the next steps of development)

Parents’ feedback

  • Found it really motivating for young children, and were keen for the app to introduce different levels of complexity for other age groups (proposed in next steps of development)

  • Really liked the physio companion idea

  • Thought their children would benefit from an app like PhysiPlay to keep them engaged and on-track with their physio

  • Said that ‘it’s very intuitive and the ability to correct immediately is so helpful’

In conclusion

How have we helped PhysiPlay?

  • Personalisation helps children like Nish feel more connected with their physio programs

  • Exercises are presented as fun and games motivating children to complete their daily physio, in order to boost their strength and overall wellbeing

  • Parents like Romesh will be better supported when assisting their children with physiotherapy

  • Physiotherapists like Nadia can now easily prescribe tailored exercises using the AI personalisation feature and the clinician’s library

  • Patients with complex needs are at the heart of the app, and are consistently represented throughout the platform

  • Inclusivity and accessibility are top differentiating factors for PhysiPlay, reflected in visuals used throughout the app (different disabilities, ages, ethnicities etc.) and settings to help children complete their prescribed exercises

  • Potential for the MVP to be developed further for different age groups and specific physio needs

Some final thoughts and feedback on PhysiPlay’s impact?

A definite YAY for PhysiPlay - Our adult patient with cerebral palsy shares her views after testing the children's app

Now, next, later

Our recommendations for PhysiPlay

What needs to be done now?

  • More testing with young patients, especially those with special education needs and disabilities (SEND)

  • A new marketing website showcasing PhysiPlay’s apps and features, to educate customers and users about its potential to improve people’s lives

  • Look into incorporating generative AI and motion-tracking technology safely and effectively

What comes next?

  • Add different levels of complexity for different age groups

  • Develop more adventures and different rewards for the children’s app

For the future

  • Build a community feature to allow patients to connect with each other and/or exercise together

  • Allow physios to add their own videos to the library

Reflecting back on my capstone project

Key takeaways

  • Collaboration is always key when working as part of a team, and so is capitalising on everyone’s strengths for different tasks in order complete the project successfully

  • Keeping an open mind and not getting too attached to certain ideas will help navigate the tasks more productively and ultimately deliver a user-centric solution

  • Working as a UX UI Designer on the PhysiPlay project was occasionally challenging, especially due to our time constraints, but it also gave me hands-on experience in each step of the design process and the opportunity to grow professionally

Sophie McCloskey - NHS Clinical Entrepreneur and Founder of PhysiPlay:

We really enjoyed working with Andreea on our UX/UI design project during her time at Experience Haus, all our interactions with her were professional and very friendly. Andreea clearly spent lots of time in understanding our design challenge and each individual users’ needs. We had regular communication when needed. It was so exciting to see the final presentation and the first designs of our product come to life. We wish her all the best for the future in the UX/UI Design space!