Project Overview
Brief
The Basketball Doctors is co-owned by two physical therapists who provide virtual and in-person physical therapy (PT) to athletes. Our team’s role was to research the needs of their current users and propose a redesign that would increase their clientele.
Role
UX Researcher, UX/UI Designer
Team
Alex Hertz, Erik Nordquist
Duration
3-week design sprint
UX Methods
Heuristic Evaluation, C&C Analysis, User Interviews, Task Analysis, Affinity Mapping, Persona, Contextual Inquiry, Journey Map
Sketching, Wireframing , Usability Testing, Prototyping, Visual Design
Tools
Notion, Slack, Zoom, Miro, Pen & Paper, Figma
THE CHALLENGE
A platform for virtual Physical Therapy was nonexistent
We conducted comparative and competitive analysis with other desktop websites of businesses who provided physical therapy and/or physical training for athletes. We found that our client offered accessible PT services through virtual and in-person physical therapy appointments. Our main concern became How do we build a platform to gain the trust of potential clients for The Basketball Doctors?
Initial Assumptions
It was important to recognize any assumptions or biases of physical therapy I had to approach the project with a fresh perspective. Some assumptions that I had was that the PT process was an easy step by step process and virtual PT isn’t as efficient or great as in-person PT.
USER INTERVIEWS & TASK ANALYSIS
Athletes share their PT experience
Our team each conducted user interviews with The Basketball Doctors’ PT clients. We asked questions to better understand their athletic background and their current experience with The Basketball Doctors. Then, we had 4 users complete several tasks on the original website.
How did users feel after task analysis?
The Physical Therapists looked knowledgeable and reliable
Didn’t know how to book an appointment
Reluctant to choose the Physical Therapists if they were not basketball players
CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY
Distracting environment hinders performance
Our team conducted a contextual inquiry of an hour long Zoom recording of a virtual PT session with a new client. We synthesized our findings into positive and improvement areas from the virtual PT experience.
RESEARCH ANALYSIS
Users are knowledgable and “progress junkies”
Through extensive research synthesis, we used an affinity map to categorize the main themes we found from each user interview and grouped them in opportunity areas that we believed the users prioritized during their PT. The 3 emerging major insights were Behavior, Mindset, and Environment.
JOURNEY MAP
Users go through an “anxiety tunnel”
In research synthesis, we discovered this "anxiety tunnel" that uncovered the psychological aspects of our users before they started their journey with The Basketball Doctors. Our users are anxious and fearful of the permanence of their injury before they decided to seek help from a professional PT.
ARCHETYPE
Meet ‘The Eager Athlete’
DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Treat new patients as existing ones
Based on our user research, we wanted any potential clients of The Basketball Doctors to feel like they’re being taken care of and ease their existing anxieties. The goal is to empower The Eager Athlete to take charge of their PT experience with the right resources.
FIRST ITERATION
Low Fidelity Wireframes
Once we defined our design principles, we used Figma to create low fidelity wireframes of our vision. Our wireframes envisioned 3 main steps of a new client for The Basketball Doctors - the first glance, the client’s onboarding, and the first meeting.
USABILITY TESTING + IMPROVEMENTS
How did we change our designs?
Based on our feedback from our usability tests, we improved our medium fidelity wireframes to a high fidelity prototype.
HIGH FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
Final design walkthrough
STYLE GUIDE
Balance between mindfulness & motivation
Our intention was to use different shades of blue to create a mindful environment for The Eager Athlete and red to motivate ‘The Eager Athlete’ to train harder.
NEXT STEPS
Future ideas
If I were to continue the build this project, I’d want to…
Build out the community pages - explore how the community page would function for users
A native mobile app - build a mobile app dedicated solely for managing and doing PT workout videos
Apple TV App - increase opportunities to easily do living room workouts
REFLECTION
Lessons I learned.
Approach new projects with an open mind. I came into this project with little to no knowledge of physical therapy (PT), I was genuinely surprised that I learned so much about the PT industry in a short 3 weeks. I immersed myself into the PT world to truly understand where the user came from, so I could make the best product to benefit ‘The Eager Athlete.’
User research will surprise you. I came into the project with surface level assumptions about PT patients and I put them aside during user interviews and research synthesis. This helped because I was surprised to discover the deeper psychological feelings of the athletes I interviewed.
Collaboration is essential. My team and I worked long hours from synthesizing research on a Miro board to finalizing details of the prototype. I learned that brainstorming or communicating ideas together can often lead to even greater outcomes!
