Thero
Improving the quality of life of rehab therapists through customizable documentation.
UX Research & Design • Healthcare • SaaS • B2C • Mobile
Team
Just Me!
(Personal Project)
My Roles
UX/UI & Visual Designer
User Researcher
Tools
Timeline
October 2023 -
February 2024
Overview
The Problem
Rehabilitation therapists (such as physical, occupational, and speech therapists) deal with high physical and mental pressures daily. Although documentation is important, it can take up too much time in the workday, leading to therapists working unpaid extended hours and burning out.
The Motivation
As my partner went through her occupational therapy clinical rotations, I would hear her and her colleagues’ horror stories of burnout and overtime in the rehabilitation therapy fields. I wanted to see what the pain points were and how I could bring a solution to life.
The Solution
Thero is a mobile application for rehabilitation therapy documentation that can travel with therapists between patients and between work settings. Users can set up their favorite templates to quickly add notes to their sessions and copy them into their proper destinations.
Jump to the High Fidelity prototypes by clicking here.
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Discovery
Secondary Research
I took to the internet to find out more about the pain points of rehab therapists. Internet forums indicated:
Therapists had to seek alternative solutions to documentation, outside of their company's native systems.
Such as by creating templates in Google Docs or OneNote.
One alarming excerpt from the Open Journal for Occupational Therapy* is that research "Outcomes indicated that clinicians are concerned that growing productivity pressures are impacting the quality of care that they provide."
*Bennett, Leslie E, et al. “Productivity standards and the impact on quality of care: A national survey of inpatient rehabilitation professionals.” The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy, vol. 7, no. 4, 15 Oct. 2019, pp. 1–11, https://doi.org/10.15453/2168-6408.1598.
Competitors
In the current solution space, 3 of the top product solutions that I chose to analyze for heuristic analysis were:
Word Documents (Docs, OneNote, Word, etc.)
Homecare Homebase Pointcare (HCHB) - a home health EMR solution
Note Designer - a note solution for psychotherapists
Likes
Word documents allow for personal customized templates.
HCHB allows for quick note completion, is integrated with EMRs, and provides notifications when appropriate.
Note Designer has a high level of customizability that is important for a wide variety of caseloads.
Dislikes
Word documents do not have much room for native collaborative, organizational, and suggestion features.
HCHB's interface is outdated and the platform cannot be used widely by therapists who travel between settings.
Note Designer is only focused on Psychotherapy and is limited to a web-app, hindering portability.
Survey
I sent out a screener survey to rehabilitation therapy professionals and received 16 responses. The experience of the participants ranged from graduate students doing their clinical rotations to working professionals with 5 years of experience.
One key finding that stuck out to me is that 75% of respondents indicated that they often work extended hours to finish their documentation.
User Interviews
From the survey, 5 users were selected to conduct interviews with and ask about their work-life balance and documentation practices. Some of the key findings were:
Therapists want to spend more active energy on their treatments, and feel like documentation is just a mundane part of the job.
Therapists typically have their go-to interventions that they can do for similar treatments across patients.
Therapists often work unpaid overtime due to not having enough time in their workday.
Therapists spend a lot of time and energy translating their sessions into notes.
Synthesis
Affinity mapping
After the interviews, I took the important quotes and ideas, color-coded them based on the type of finding, and separated them thematically. It was clear that both the problems and solutions for therapist's jobs revolved around documentation, primarily note-taking.
User Personas
How might we…
With the people and pain points in mind, I wanted to distill the information down into an actionable question that focuses on who we are helping and how we can help them.
How might we help rehab therapists reduce their mental load and focus more energy on therapy?
Ideation
Honing In
I explored a variety of solutions on different platforms and ultimately chose to dive deeper into designing a solution for a mobile application. This would enable the solution's ability to:
Travel with users who may work for different settings or travel a lot
Be easily accessible if the user were not at a place where they could get to a PC or laptop and
Reach a larger user base than a browser-focused solution
User Stories & Flows
To keep the context of the user in mind, I brainstormed user stories and narrowed these down into what was necessary for an MVP. From here, I created a user flow to illustrate the points in a therapist's day where they could do their documentation.
Red Routes & Sketches
After fully understanding the context that the therapists might use Thero in, it was time to come up with some red-routes to frame the solution around. The red-routes I used are:
Creating a documentation template.
Using a documentation template.
Adding and editing a documentation template from another user.
Once these were decided on, I sketched out some ideas to build the foundation of the app's interface.
Wireflows & Guerilla Testing
Designing wireframes for the red routes was a low cost solution to fleshing out the ideas in more depth. In order to validate these wireframes without spending too much time on them, I set out to guerilla test them. From this testing, I learned that:
Users had a difficult time grasping how templates were built and where input choices were coming from.
The inputs for templates should match the flexibility and customization of rehab therapy.
Templates should not have too many options to decide between and cause decision paralysis.
Prototype & Test
Visual Design
After tweaking my wireframes, it was time to switch gears to create the style guides for Thero.
Being a healthcare app used for professionals who work with patients in recovery, I wanted the visual design of the app to reflect hope and brightness. To accomplish this, I focused on utilizing brighter tones while keeping the fonts and iconography light and easy on the eyes. Here is a look at the moodboard I created to guide the visual design.
Features & Testing
Combining the wireflows and style guide, I was able to create a high fidelity mockup of Thero. With this in hand, I drafted a usability test script and recruited 5 participants each for 2 usability testing sessions with the goal of evaluating and iterating the solution designs based on user performance and feedback.
Creating a Template
During user testing, it became apparent that the variable creation was unclear due to the unfamiliar iconography. It also left users wanting a more guided experience for inputs that are commonly repetitive (like rating scales and pain types).
Iterations:
Added modules to the template creation UI
Reduces cognitive load when using the templates with increased guidance for inputs
Removed the static tools field since users showed that their mental image of "tools" was as a variable/module
Changed "Save" button to be outlined to reduce its priority and avoid users saving while in the middle of a task
Using a Template
User testing for using a template fortunately exposed a lot of usability issues. From the interview data, some changes I made were:
Adjusted the hierarchy of actions that users could take when opening a session drawer for a more guided user journey.
Integrated the modules to increase user engagement and reduce cognitive load while completing their notes.
Added auto-save indicators to show users that their progress is updated and safe.
Flow: Adding Templates from Search
User testing for adding a template from search went comparatively smoother than the other flows. Users were able to successfully complete the tasks, but had some trouble when it came to editing the templates after adding them. In order to tackle this I added a toast notification to provide navigational guidance.
Final Flows
Creating a Template
With the new iterations, users had enough freedom over their template design and could reduce the cognitive load they have to use later when completing their notes. Furthermore, the changes made to the save button proved to reduce misclicks and improve task completion.
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Using a Template
In the latest prototype iterations, users showed that they had a clearer journey from start to finish. Therapists are better able to understand what they are filling in and can navigate around the note more efficiently. They also appreciated seeing that their progress was being saved and noted that this is a common frustration with older systems.
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Adding Templates from Search
This user journey was one of particular interest to my users, especially those that are in their early stages of their career. It allowed them to feel like a part of the therapy community and made them excited to build off of the work of others. With the latest prototype changes, task completion improved from 60% to 100%.
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Outcomes
Usability Testing Outcomes
Round 2 of usability testing was met with positive feedback and showed an overall improvement in the design of Thero. Some notable benchmarks were:
An increased focus on the primary task as shown by an 80% decrease in misclicks.
An evident increase in enjoyment when using a template and seeing progress being saved.
It also showed more moments that are worthy of note for future iterations. For example, including autosaving in template creation and creating a better user experience for when a session's documentation is finished.
In general, I would also like to increase the liveliness and message of "hope" throughout the app, through aspects like illustration and energetic transitions.
What about AI?
I heavily considered incorporating the usage of AI into the features of Thero and incorporated some questions for its use in my user interviews. I believe that AI can be a strong tool, but what I learned from my user interviews and user testing is that therapists don't necessarily need a tool to write out drafts for them, they need a tool that can help them organize their thoughts and translate their sessions better.
Some of my users had already tried out AI and phased it out of their workflow in favor of writing documentation themselves. Therapists already have an idea of what their note should look like, it just takes a while for them to get there sometimes. Because of this, I focused on helping users have tools to help themselves, as opposed to having AI write something that they likely have to edit anyways.
Of course, I believe there is a place for an AI feature with Thero. It could help organize lengthier reports and evaluations or something of the sort. In future iterations, I would like to research and explore this need further.
In Conclusion
This process was really inspiring to me, both personally and professionally. I was able to see potential for Thero to help rehab therapists across the board. Users expressed their interest in using Thero to improve their quality of life at work and from hearing their stories, it is evident how important it is for the people in charge of patient recovery to have opportunities to prevent their own burnout. I am grateful to have been able to work with these healthcare heroes and hope to be able to serve them in the future!
