Athletico Pain Journal

simplify your physical therapy journey

The Problem:

Physical therapy is a painful and daunting task, especially for chronic pain sufferers. There is often a myriad of exercises that have to be completed at different intervals on different days.

The Solution:

The Athletico pain journey app helps people efficiently schedule PT and streamlines workouts to make physical therapy as simple and easy as possible. The journal feature keeps the user focused on long-term results to help mitigate discouragement from common short-term setbacks.

Research

Empathy mapping helped to uncover opportunities and crystallize the user’s struggles managing her pain. It led down path of gentle nudges and encouragement towards simple, streamlined, guided workouts.

Design

Wireframes

Notifications & Home

The interaction with this app begins with friendly notifications gently reminding the user to open the app and start their daily workout. The home screen is full of rounded corners and a soft blue background that works with the Athletico brand and also keeps a gentle feeling throughout the app.

Daily Workout Flow

The main workout flow guides the user through each day’s scheduled exercises, one-by-one. Before and after each day’s workout there is a short survey which is recorded for the mood and pain charting feature. Each exercise gets its own screen, to help the user stay present and reduce mental load. Reference videos are available during each exercise as well. The workout ends with a congratulations and an inspirational quote to encourage the user in their physical therapy journey.

Scheduling Flow

Users can view their overall schedule from the scheduling section in the app. The trainer selects appropriate exercises and their frequency, and the user can pick the days of the week to do each exercise. The exercises are to be done a specific amount of times per week—this is the most common scheduling paradigm in PT.

Pain Charting

When dealing with chronic pain or any obstacle or ailment over the medium to long-term, people have a tendency toward recency bias. This causes them to emphasize the most recent setback or problem over the progress that they’ve made over a longer time scale. In turn, this can lead to feelings of hopelessness and despair. Progress charts over different time scales serve as a reminder to the user, that even though things may feel bad at the moment, they’re getting better overall. This would lead to more hope for the user and eventually, to better outcomes.