Functional Assessment App
Team Members: Pierce DeChantal, Laura Martin, Bret Zimmerman
Methods: contextual inquiry // wireframing // prototyping // stakeholder interview
Tools: whiteboard // axure // sketch // keynote // inDesign
User:
Andy Masis, DPT
Problem/Challenge:
Andy performs functional assessments to gain knowledge and get a baseline of performance for his patients. His current system is unorganized, unprofessional, clumsy and time consuming. Our challenge was to design a process that steamlined how Andy built, performed, documented and shared results of a functional assessment.
solution:
Our solution was to design a mobile first web application that is an all-in-one tool that can build, perform and document a functional assessment. The application will also provide a clean, concise and professional report that can be shared with everyone connected to patients care.
Discovery & Process
Through my research, there wasn't anything out in the marketplace that was similar to this. The closest products/templates were the ones that our user was already using. There was no guide or framework to start from. We had to list what we knew, didn't know and what we assumed to figure out where to begin.
Interviews:
To help guide our design we wanted to interview staff that would be administering the assessment and using the application and an end user that would be receiving the assessment report. There are only a select few that would actually be using the app.
- Physical Therapist
- 2 Physical Therapist Assistants
- Primary Care Physician
- Surgeon
Contextual inquiry:
To get a better understanding of what is all incorporated in a functional assessment and see first hand what Andy's struggles and issues were we headed into Andy's office to perform a cognitive inquiry of him taking a patient through an assessment.
Mapping and Wireframes:
To wrap our heads around the flow and give us a better understanding of how much content we needed to have in the app we mapped out the flow of the application.
One of the major challenges was to design an outcome page, a finished product that would have all the information from the assessment on one, legible and easily understood document. I was in charge of the design and layout of this deliverable.
The current process was to use multiple scoring sheets and only using 1 or 2 tests on each sheet (10-20 tests per sheet). This would leave multiple tests empty and cause the deliverable to be a multi-page document with very little information per page.
Below is the re-designed and consolidated deliverable for end users such as patients, Surgeons, primary care Physicians, insurance auditors, coaches, etc. This information/score sheet now takes all applicable information that was entered into the app and organizes and calculates it.
Lo-Fi Wireframes of important screens. Click image to enlarge.
Final prototyping and Goals
Through our research and iterations we have come up with a highly functional as well as brand specific application that will provide time saving, professional looking and quality assessment execution and reporting. The landscape of our healthcare system is very precarious. The better tools our practitioners have the better care we as patients will receive. We feel that this is a design/tool that can do just that.