KneeStim
Helping patients receive faster rehabilitation with KneeStim
KneeStim is a wearable device that helps rehabilitate knees through neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES). Founded by a startup company, Articulate Labs, KneeStim was designed to help patients that suffer from osteoarthritis or are on the road to recovery post-operative physical therapy. KneeStim was also created after one of the founders, an amputee, survived a motorcycle accident and found an unmet need for rehabilitation and a new category in wearable medical devices.
KneeStim Mobile Prototype
The Opportunity: Learn about KneeStim’s features and design a mobile app that acts as the device’s control panel to change stimulation settings and review/share data from the device.
“The greatest obstacle to effective knee rehabilitation is failed participation in prescribed physical therapy treatment.”
About 50-70% of patients fail to complete home exercise rehabilitation or physical therapy (PT) sessions after suffering an injury. With COVID-19, that number increased by up to 20% in no-shows and cancellations which prolonged the road to recovery or increased the risk of recurrent injury flare ups.
Traditional NMES devices are to be worn by the patient during a PT session and while stationary, whereas, KneeStim can be worn while doing everyday tasks while still receiving stimulation. Oftentimes, rehab is seen as a chore (or can be painful!) which makes it difficult to get patients to see the benefit in attending.
The founders were aware of this and wanted to create an app to complement their wearable device and provide data that would motivate patients to continue with their progress.
“When wearing the KneeStim, I don’t want them to have to tolerate us.”
My goal was to create a high-fidelity prototype that is compatible with a new medical device-- a knee rehabilitation brace.
The app would sync to mobile devices via Bluetooth and would track and monitor a set of data metrics for the user.
It was important to the client that the app was engaging for the user to use and that the user felt motivated to utilize it on a daily basis.
Who’s this for? Our audience is anyone that is looking for a convenient way to rehab their knee or seeking osteoarthritis treatment
Photo by Los Muertos Crew from Pexels
The first user of the device was the co-founder who was inspired to create KneeStim after his own rehabilitation journey after a motorcycle accident.
Next, the device is for individuals that are looking for a more convenient way to rehab their knee that doesn’t interfere with their day-to-day life that they can monitor and control (typically patients in the age group 35-60s). The device would also be available to medical professionals that would like to prescribe to their patients.
Roles & Responsibilities: Due to COVID, all collaboration, client meetings, and user testing were done remotely over Zoom video calls.
I was one of two UI designers.
We were given a set of wireframes from the UX team that previously worked on the project to expand upon, but we learned after testing our users that certain changes needed to be made.
While we conducted user research and user testing of prototypes together, the style tiles and prototypes we designed were each our own.
Scope & Constraints
Not too “sterile”
The founders mentioned that any graphics or imagery related to the medical industry tends to veer on the “sterile” side and wanted to break away from this norm.
Color! But not too much.
When I presented a series of mobile screens all with varying colorways and there was a specific screen with colors that seemed to put a smile on their face; however, when I incorporated those same colors onto a style tile, the feedback from user testing was less than pleasant. After presenting the feedback with the style tile to the clients, they no longer favored those colors anymore.
Layman’s terms, please!
While the set of wireframes we were given gave us some sort of blueprint to work with, I quickly learned that a lot of the medical jargon left our users feeling confused which is the opposite of what we were trying to achieve. I later discovered that the users that were tested for the wireframes were in the medical field so adjustments needed to be made to be more user friendly.
Lock safety feature
A lock feature was important to add to prevent accidental changes during an active stimulation session. I went through different iterations that showed this lock/unlock state that would be easily accessible but not too easy to where accidental slips would occur.
Process: Create an app that is compatible with KneeStim that allows users to easily change stimulation settings, track daily use, and share data with healthcare provider
Exploratory research and competitive analysis: learn more about knee braces on the market and how KneeStim compares
Client workshop: To get a feel for what kind of visuals the clients were going for, I conducted a “20-second gut test workshop” with them in the kickoff meeting. I presented a series of 10 different mobile app screens and asked what they liked and didn’t like about each of them to move forward with a design direction.
Style tiles: I took the two that they liked best and created style tiles based on their preferences. I also created a third style tile that closely resembled the clients’ current color scheme of their brand as a benchmark for user testing.
During the workshop, the clients favored the color scheme for the mobile app that represented style tile C, but when presented with these three options, they no longer favored the colors.
Design principles: Before designing the mobile screens, I laid out 3 design principles the app should encompass to keep at the forefront
Distinct: Create an app that stands out from what is considered the stereotypical medical app.
User-Centric: Make the app engaging for users to encourage them to use it and track progress.
Clarity: Present the user’s info and progression in a clear and digestible way.
To keep the wearer engaged, data in the form of graphs and helpful tips were added in the final version of the prototype.
User testing: I conducted three rounds of testing, iterating on the design from a set of three divergent style tiles to two high fidelity prototypes.
Outcomes & Lessons Learned:
Remember you are not the client!
It was a challenge to create style tiles based on the design directions that were selected by the client, because they didn’t align with my expectations for the product. I had to remind myself that I wasn’t creating the app for myself and that I was designing for the client and potential users. I constantly asked for feedback on my design decisions to make sure they were still aligned with the original inspiration.
Design for all
It was important to keep in mind the older audience that would be using the device and make sure that features and functionality were intuitive for them to use the app effectively. Also, another thing to keep in mind while designing were font and button sizes. One of the clients jokingly mentioned “fat finger syndrome” which would be an awful thing to experience on a device where you receive stimulation.
KneeStim, coming soon to a clinic/provider near you!
Currently, KneeStim has four patents issued and two patents pending and has won several awards and recognition such as Winner, OrthoChallenge (2020) and AiQ Smart Clothing Special Prize at Wearable Technologies Conference in Europe. They have also been granted proof of concept as UT-Austin research showed KneeStim to be 99% accurate on stride detection and 100% accurate on muscle and band contraction. The founders are setting up a waitlist for users to rent/own KneeStim and medical professionals that would be interested in offering it to their patients.
Conclusion
In the end, the clients were pleased with the designs and when the project came to an end, they had mentioned that hearing the feedback from the user testing and questions that we raised while developing the app was eye opening and meant there were still some areas that they needed to address before the device and app both go live.
This was my first client project and while I am grateful for the experience and the valuable lessons, there are a few things I would have done differently:
It was difficult to gather more elaborate feedback from the clients. I sent a survey after our workshop to get more detailed explanations on why they liked and disliked certain examples but got no response so I had to make a few executive decisions and hope for the best.
I would have emphasized the importance of participation in workshops and activities afterward and to remind the clients to think out loud and I would ask an obscene amount of clarifying questions.
If I were to continue working on the project, there would be other features that I would like our audience to test such as:
Adding some sort of gamification aspect to the app to make the experience more engaging and fun
Allow the user to personalize the app by selecting a theme or pre-set colorway
A feature to include uplifting messages to encourage the user to continue
Images or video tutorials of at-home exercises that have been approved to do for the specific injury