Case 02
Enabling Dynamic, Patient-Centered Remote Stroke Rehabilitation
HealingHand
Enabling Dynamic, Patient-Centered Remote Stroke Rehabilitation
Therapist-facing patient portal
Overview
Created a clinical portal for remote stroke care, enabling therapists to assign incremental exercises and progress. MVP earned 90% satisfaction.
My Role
UX Designer
Company
HealingHand
Timeline
May 2023- Oct 2023
Team
2 UX Designers
1 UX Researcher
1 Physical Therapist
1 Registered Nurse
1 SLP
Skills
Figma
UX Research
Hardware + Software
0 to 1, MVP
Problem
How might we design a remote rehabilitation treatment portal that enables dynamic, incremental care while keeping the experience patient-centric and aligned with therapists' evolving workflows?
Solution
Patient-Centric Overview with Left-to-Right Workflow
The final Patient Overview page enables therapist to work from the left tab to the right to view patient information and current progress, set goals, create exercise programs, and view patients' self reports and weekly check-in.
Dynamic, Incremental Exercise Assignment
From usability tests feedback, we decided to focus on Design Version A - motion-oriented with some modifications inspired from Version B.
Now, let's start with some context
HealingHand Tech is a stroke rehabilitation startup combining a wearable device and gamified app to support patient recovery remotely. I was part of the clinical portal UX team, focused on designing tools that help therapists manage and adapt treatment plans for their patients.
Goal
Build the MVP of clinical portal to help therapists monitor progress and assign personalized exercises in a remote setting.
My Role
Lead parts of UX Research, spearhead Patient Overview and Exercise Program Assignment, assist in Design Systems
Process
How did we proceed and distribute the work? In the research stage, I assisted by leading some of the interviews. In the design stage, I was responsible for Patient Overview and Exercise Program Assignment pages while assisting with other pages.
Understanding the Problem
Identifying problem risk and clarity
But where do we start? We narrowed the scope to a core MVP feature: exercise assignment building. To reduce risk and clarify the task, we prioritized research to better understand the problem.
2 Rounds User interviews
Understanding the full stroke treatment journey, from evaluation to discharge, was key to informing our product design. We later conducted a second research round to identify challenges and opportunities for the clinical portal. Interviews included:
4 Occupational Therapists (OT)
2 Physical Therapists (PT)
1 Certified Hand Therapist (CHT)
1 Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP)
8 Doctoral occupational therapy students
What do all these tell us?
Finding Synthesis -> Insights
After interviews and Affinity Mapping of over 500 transcripts and notes, we synthesized a few insights:
Patient-Centric Collaboration
Therapists help patients set personalized goals that align with their daily life to ensure treatments are relevant and focused.
Incremental and Dynamic Process
Complex treatment plans are broken down into smaller, manageable steps with dynamic adjustments to make process easier and less aversive.
Progress & Compliance Tracking
Being able to keep track of patient progress through the wearable device data is integral to validating treatment effectiveness and future planning.
Patient-centric Collaboration
We outlined an the Patient Page structure in 3 columns to maintain the patient-progress-centric focus from the Patient Tab -> Patient progress workflow -> Communication between therapist and patient:
Incremental and Dynamic Process
How can we support both structured planning and flexible thinking? We designed two incremental approaches for building exercise programs:
Design A: Motion-Oriented
Follows therapists’ conventional cognitive model
Starts with a specific motion
Builds toward combined motions and long-term goals
Design B: Goal-Oriented
Begins with an ADL (daily activity) goal
Helps streamline assignment and track progress
Reflects therapists’ interest in outcome-based planning
Progress & Compliance Tracking
How can we give therapists a clear view of patient engagement and recovery? The Patient Overview page highlights key metrics:
Weekly Compliance
Tracks if patients complete exercises daily and weekly
Shows success rate of motion performance as a percentage
AROM (Active Range of Motion) Progress
Visualizes improvement across 6 upper limb areas
Uses colored hexagons to compare initial and current performance at a glance
MVP Usability Testing
We conducted usability testing with 6 participants where all of them went through the Overall tasks, while half of them were assigned Version A and half were assigned Version B.
Exercise Assignment Task Completion Rate A vs. B
Overall Results
💬 "It fits with how I work with my patients, that's the great part."
💬 " I feel that it gives more motivation to follow up with my patient."
💬 " Surprised at how easy it it to assign a program, much less thinking to put in than the current software we have."
