Background
The Hamm clinic group asked Number42 to develop an app for their rehab patients with the goal of making their rehab stay more convenient and helping them to reach their rehab goals. They made the experience that patients have become more and more used to using digital health tools in their everyday lives and therefore a more digital rehab experience is needed that matches these usage habits. A particular focus was set on enabling patients to track their fitness and diet progress.
My role
I was taking over as the UX designer right before the app needed to be extended to include fitness and diet tracking features. I had to work closely with the client and their user research to ensure we create a product that meets user needs. My team consisted of me, a product manager and developers. I was temporarily also the product manager of the team.
Challenges
Digital literacy of some patients was low and it turned out that UI elements that I perceived obvious in how to use them were not understood by users (E.g. certain card UIs being tappable). I targeted this by either using more familiar OS UI patterns even if they were not my preferred option and adding hint labels where it was necessary.
Dealing with user research being done by an external party (client) meant less control over methodology and research goals
Product manager task alongside the already challenging design role: Managing the distribution of workload amongst multiple colleagues, estimating cost and time of design and development work
The logic of screens and UIs within screens was complex for this tracking feature and calendar and needed to be thought through in detail, especially regarding edge cases and empty cases
Design process
As every project at Number42, the HammKliniken app is designed and developed in an agile way. We started with a minimum viable product and continuously added sets of features. The design of the new fitness and goal tracking feature followed the process below
1
Discovery user research by the client in form of patient surveys, creation of user needs and personas
2
Ideation together with the client using sketching, wireframes and parallel prototyping. Using behavior change frameworks to develop concepts that enable users to reach their rehab goals through a healthier lifestyle.
3
Creation of interactive HiFi prototypes
4
Heuristic evaluation, internal team design crits and feedback rounds with subject matter experts. Unfortunately, user testing wasn't feasible due to time and budget constraints. I proposed usability and diary studies.
5
Development and release of feature
6
Informal evaluation with patient feedback that then lead to minor adjustments
Early wireframe used for ideation with client
Result
The following screens were designed by me as part of the fitness and rehab goal tracking feature. The feature has been rolled out in late 2022 and according to Hamm Kliniken is widely adopted amongst patients, who especially appreciate the visual goal tracking to motivate them to reach their goals.
User need: Being able to see the fitness progress and todays exercises at a glance
Solution: Using the success diary ("Erfolgstagebuch") screen, patients can track their endurance, weight, and relaxation exercises as well as steps, weight and diet goals. and see how far the goals that clinicians set for them are reached. Using horizontally scrolling cards with chart styles familiar to users from other fitness apps users can quickly get an overview over their progress.
User need: Being able to see the progress of exercises over time and comparing it to the goals set by the clinician
Solution: Users can track their progress in a detail view and compare it to the goal (here: "Ziel") in the same bar chart that shows the development over time. Using visualizations on this and the previous screen proved to be more successful with users than showing tables with numbers.
User need: Get informed about important messages and being able to see upcoming calendar events (e.g. classes) so that relevant communication or appointments are not missed
Solution: Adding an overview of the rehab calendar to the frequently visited “My Rehab” ("Meine Reha") screen while still maintaining all current features accessible (e.g. mealplan).
User need: Being able to see calendar events for the rest of the rehab stay.
Solution: Using a detail screen and a calendar UI that is familiar to the native calendar apps on iOS and Android allows patients even with low digital literacy to navigate through future days and see events and messages.
- Cindy Grant, Head of Corporate Communications, Hamm Clinic Group