Ground Control

Client

MVMTLAB

Product

Mobile App

Role

Project Lead Designer

Tools

(tLDR version)

Project Overview

MVMTLAB is a sports performance clinic that specializes in rehabilitating their patients' injuries back into shape by incorporating neurological reprogramming methods into their in-clinic session called “Ground Control”

The Challenge

MVMTLAB patients weren't able to come into the clinic for the Ground Control sessions on a regular basis due to time and commuting constraints and as a result their road to recovery was delayed.

The Solution

A mobile app was designed to replicate the Ground Control session via guided videos exercises so patients could take it home with them and maintain a regular recovery routine. Additional features include a 30-day challenge supported by an online recovery tracker and coach-client accountability program.

Services

Project Management | Client Liaison | Full UX Services

Visit Website

Get the Loh-Down

The Scope

Project Background

MVMTLAB is a sports performance clinic that specializes in rehabilitating injuries back into shape by incorporating neurological reprogramming methods into their one-hour session called “Ground Control”. A lot of their patients are athletes or people with active lifestyles who have suffered short and long term sports-related injuries. The secret sauce behind Ground Control is that it resets their patients' postures by holding various positions that follow infant pattern movements that are uniquely named after animals and creatures such as "Bear", "Superbug", "Gargoyle", etc. It's through holding these positions over a prolonged period of time that challenges the mind to go beyond what it "thinks" it can take and train the body to strengthen the areas of weakness. I was the team lead for this project and worked with a team of three UX designers and two UI designers.

The Problem

One of the biggest issues the patients were experiencing was the lack of access to consistently come to the clinic and participate in the Ground Control class due to commuting and time constraints. They loved the session and exercises and saw that it was making a difference but unfortunately life got in the way and patients were not able to recover as quickly as they wanted to.

Goals

The scope of the project is to design a mobile app that recreates the class session of Ground Control in the form of guided video exercises so patients can access it wherever and whenever they want.

Business Goals

Provide value-added service to clients and interested public
Track client activity and recovery

User Goals

Complete a 30-day program and experience great results
Have the ability to document how they felt after each session

App Goals

Create accountability to assist clients to complete ground control session
Scale access to practice on neurological reprogramming

No items found.

The Design Process

Research & Findings

To start the discovery phase of the design process, I went to the clinic to conduct a contextual inquiry. To better understand what the patients were going through as they participated in Ground Control, I decided to experience a small sample of it and try out a few positions. Within 10 minutes, parts of my body was burning from maintaining the postures and after the exercise was complete, I immediately saw results in increased mobility.

Surveys & Interviews

While at the clinic, I interviewed 5 patients to understand what they liked and didn't like about Ground Control and their reasons for taking the class. Based on the qualitative data collected from all the interviews, a lot of the patients said the following things:

"The lack of accountability makes it hard for me to practice ground control at home. I usually stop after 10 minutes"

"Class sizes are limited"

“I care about my integrity if I know others are watching my daily progress”

“I can’t fit ground control in my schedule as often as I would like”

“The instructor’s detailed explanation of my muscle groups helped me focus past the pain”

A survey was also sent out to the patient list to gain a larger scale quantitative understanding of the experience of patients and found the following:

50% of respondents said more exercises were done when accountable to others
43% of respondents said they don't attend classes regularly due to a lack of time and 30% said it was due to commuting challenges
66% of respondents said they would use an app if it would help them train and recover and 28% was open to the idea

Design Planning

‍

After collecting all the qualitative and quantitative data from the discovery phase, my team displayed all the key findings on an affinity diagram and distilled the user persona. We discovered that our target audience for the app lives a very active lifestyle and is self-motivated, however, always appreciates the extra accountability that comes from friends or a team environment. Below is a user persona that summarizes the target audience.

Based on the data we collected, we knew that our user persona was looking for the following features which would allow him to effectively use the app. It was important that the users had the ability to document some form of feedback to rate their Ground Control session each day so a coach or friend can monitor their health and activity.

Feature List

Activity Tracker
Post-Activity Feedback Documentation
Videos
Reminders
Community
Accountability

The main user flow of the app was quite straight forward to create once the main features were laid out. We wanted to create a user flow that was simple, focused, and easy to access when it comes to starting the Ground Control session. The initial user flow started out below (in red) and ended up being finalized (in blue).

Prototyping & Testing

Ground Control Main Screen

Following the criteria to keep the userflow simple, focused, and easy to access, I made the Ground Control activity as the main screen. A card system was used to highlight the session of the day as the main focus followed by the 30-day progress tracker and options for light and heavy as the secondary point of focus. Another reason for using a card layout was the easy use of swiping left to shuffle through the days of the 30-day challenge. We originally had five buttons in the bottom navigation bar but later reduced it to three as the minimal viable product. After some testing, we found that users were confused about how the light and heavy options changed the activity and felt the screen was too cluttered, so we changed the light and heavy options into a tab system which also provided more space and focus on the progress bar.

Client-Coach Accountability

To provide a sense of accountability for the users to keep up with their recovery, we created a separate login for the coaches/clinicians to review their patients' activity and reach out to check in on their recovery.

Client Profile

The profile page summarized the activity under daily reports and completed challenges. After each session is completed, the user would rate how each session went as well as document any pain levels and note any discomfort so over time they're able to track their recovery. After each user has completed a 30-day challenge, a monthly average score is calculated to summarize their overall experience in a 10-scale system. This feature addresses the users request for feedback as well as provide the coaches a quick way to access detailed reports and gauge how each patient is doing.

Insights Learned

I realized the importance of investing into the discovery phase and taking the time to understand not only what the goals were but to see how it overlaps with the needs of the users. I felt that my team was able to clearly identify what the main design criteria were and make the design decisions to focus on certain essential features while leaving others out for future considerations. As a result, our client was very pleased with the design of the app and it met their goal to be simple, focused, and accessible.