Neophytes - GR3

In this group assignment, we designed, built, and tested a paper prototype.

Prototype Photos

Paper Prototypes

Briefing

You are an athletic trainer at MIT and it is your job to design a therapy program for your new patient Josh, a basketball player. Josh has mildly sprained his right knee. Typically, after a player is injured, he or she completes a month long exercise program designed by the trainer. An exercise program consists of a series of exercises that have a certain number of repetitions (number of times to do the movement) and sets (number of times to do the repetitions). These exercise programs are unique to each injury and athlete.

Scenario Tasks

You need to complete the following tasks:

• Create a new profile for Josh
• Update Josh's Injury Status

• Add squats, hamstring curls, leg extensions, and quad stretches to his exercise plan
• For week 2, add lunges to Josh’s exercise plan
• Change the number of squats to 2 sets and 20 repetitions
• Submit the training plan so Josh can view it on his mobile phone

Additional Notes: Because Josh is currently not in the system, we tested the interface to create a new athlete. Additionally, only some exercises were initially visible, so the user needed to search for some of these exercises.

Observations

Scrollable exercise chart

In order to reduce clutter on the screen, we initially displayed only 3 days of exercises at a time. We felt this would reduce on screen complication. When the user had to add lunges for week 2, the majority of users only saw days 1-3 and were forced to go back and forth through the chart. Both users B and C commented that it would be easier to display more columns in the chart (especially because each column only contains two small numbers).

Unused drag-n-drop

To add exercises to the chart, we assumed that users would intuitively drag the exercises from the sidebar into the chart. However, not a single user took advantage of this functionality. To modify this interface problem, we added text to empty chart rows that said 'Drag exercises here'. In our second round of testing, all three users dragged the exercises into the chart.

Creating new athlete

To create a new user on the system, we predicted the user would type the patient's name into the search bar. If the name was not in the system, then one option of the autosuggest would be to create a new patient. In our first round of testing, 2 of our first 3 users (1) looked at recently viewed athletes, (2) did not see Josh, (3) sat confused for a second. We added recently viewed athletes to improve efficiency, but it decreased learnability and safety. To solve this problem, we decided that we should only display the recently viewed athletes to non-first time users of the system.

Finding injury status

Users A and C, upon creating Josh as a new athlete, were unsure how to update Josh's injury status. User C gave an 'uhh' because he was not sure what he should click next. In our design, we had an injury status in the athlete's information bar. However, we noticed that every new user will have an injury, so the injury status should be easier to find. This interface problem presented learnability problems because new users had to discover the area to change an athlete's injury status

Prototype Iteration

Added 'Finish' button - We completely forgot to add a finish button after the user completed designing the program. This error was noticed immediately at subsequently fixed.

Drag and Drop Text - We added filler text to empty charts that encouraged users to DRAG the exercises into the chart.

Injury Status Modal - Once the user created Josh's profile, we presented the user with a modal to select his injury status.

Exercise Chart - We redrew the exercise chart with two weeks worth of columns. This change was intended to help the task, 'add lunges to week 2'

Removed recently viewed athletes - We changed the first time user experience to only display a search bar on the homepage. This helped direct first time users to search for the athlete. Additionally, we had a create athlete button as a + sign, but we augmented it to include the text 'Create Athlete' to improve interface clarity.