Consumer EMS device
Challenge
Phase 1: Provide the EMS development team with a more well-defined end user group to help focus product design and marketing efforts.
Phase 2: Improve usability and first-time-use experience for the device’s mobile app.
Outcome
Phase 1: A new potential customer segment
Phase 2: Developer hand-off package consisting of mockups, animation requirements, and illustration assets to address user anxiety issues with app.
Company
Rehabtronics
Role
User research
UX/UI design
Timeline
6 weeks (3 weeks per phase)
A little context
I was brought onto the development team for a consumer electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) device. The product was in the later stage of development (hardware, firmware, and accompanying app were either being finalized, reworked, or debugged). At the point of my arrival, understanding of the potential users and target market was limited and vague.
My time on this project was split between two phases. The first phase was focused on marketing and user research and the second phase was focused on UX/UI design of the product's mobile app.
A brief overview of EMS devices
EMS devices send small electrical pulses to muscles through sticky, reusable electrodes. The pulses stimulate surrounding muscles and by doing so, can help to both warm muscles up before activity and cool them down afterwards by helping to remove lactic acid.
Phase 1
Challenge
Provide the EMS development team with a more well-defined end user group to help focus product design and marketing efforts.
Collecting knowledge
To begin exploring potential target users for the product, I performed competitive analyses of companies within the consumer EMS space. To do this, I used the Business Model Canvas (BMC) developed by Alexander Osterwalder.
The analyses showed that our competitors were solely focused on muscle recovery and injury prevention for athletes — both pro and amateur. This narrow focus opened the door to explore new customer segments.
To better understand these opportunities, I reached out to people who might require muscle recovery devices but weren't athletes. I messaged friends, cold called local businesses, and followed up with referrals in order to interview ~20 individuals about their experiences.
Methods
Competitive analysis / In-depth interviews / Secondary research
Competitors were solely focused on pro and amateur athletes — this narrow focus opened the door to explore new customer segments
New avenues
Through this research process, I learned that athletes weren’t the only ones who needed to recover quickly and prevent injuries. There was another group of individuals who needed to perform at their best day in and day out — people with high intensity, physically demanding careers!
This is a massive market of individuals who put constant strain on their bodies and can loose out on essential money if they’re unable to come to work due to acute or chronic injuries. Therefore, they are motivated to keep their bodies in good working order.
Special shoutout
I want to acknowledge the Paramedic instructors at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) for taking the time to talk to me and help me better understand what types of physical issues paramedics encounter in their day-to-day work.
Firefighters, paramedics, construction workers, and many other physically demanding careers require the same muscle recovery and injury prevention as athletes
Impact
Based on the research I had conducted, I created an initial persona to highlight the needs of people working in these physically demanding jobs. From there, I presented my research findings and marketing strategy recommendations to the CEO and Design Director of our company.
This new customer segment helped to redirect our product offering before we had moved too far down product development.
Research pool
Through the interview recruitment process, I was able to generate a decent list of engaged individuals who agreed to being reached out to again for further research and testing once the product was closer to a working prototype stage.
Phase 2
Challenge
After a hiatus from the Consumer EMS project, I was brought back to the development team to rework the existing smartphone app that complimented the hardware side of the project. At my time of arrival, the app was already very far along the development pipeline and was fully functional with the existing hardware.
I was tasked with improving the UI of the app which already had preliminary designs and screens built out by a 3rd party app developer.
Collecting knowledge
To kick things off, I conducted a UX audit of the current app and noted my initial impressions and opinions about the existing experience. I had a hunch that there were some experiential gaps that needed attention but I had to test my assumptions before jumping into any solutions.
To get some fast and cheap research, I began by observing colleagues and friends interact with the app for the first time to gather some rough first impressions. I created a list of issues which I believed were the largest, riskiest, and most important to validate and solve.
To test these issues, I built an in-person usability testing rig and ran a pilot study with an individual who matched our target customer and hadn’t seen the app yet. The usability test validated my hunches and unearthed a very important insight
Individuals who had never experienced EMS devices were unsure what would happen when the stimulation began and this caused real anxiety
Insights
Many people (including our staff) had never experienced electrical muscle stimulation before. This, understandably, led to people being anxious about when the stimulation would start and how long it would last.
In addition to this anxiety, it was unclear how to apply the stimulator properly to different muscle groups on the body and the mobile app onboarding was both overwhelming and unclear.
Unfortunately, due to timelines and budget constraints, I was not permitted to do further usability testing. So, based on the learnings I had, I created a list of changes to make to the app which I believed would improve usability while balancing the number and complexity of changes needed.
From there, I explored the following question...
How might we reduce anxiety for individuals trying an EMS device for the first time?
Ideation and execution
I used sketches, wireframes, and prototypes to explore a number of ways to help ease users’ anxiety when using the device. My solution to this problem was to show all phases of a stimulation cycle on the same interface so that it was clear to a user when and for how long a stimulation phase would last as opposed to showing one at a time.
I then packaged the new designs up in a hand-off document for the 3rd party app developers we were working with. Included in the document were mockups, animation requirements, and illustration assets.
Tools
Adobe XD / Marvel
Original stimulation screen
Redesigned stimulation screens showing all three stages of stimulation program
Original walkthrough screen
Redesigned walkthrough screens stepping through each section on the page
Original connection screen
Redesigned connection screens stepping through the connection process
Impact
Changes were made by the app developers but, unfortunately, a few months after these changes were added to the app, the entire project was paused due to a lack of external grant funding.
Learnings
This project was full of firsts.
It was the first time I had conducted user research specifically on mobile apps and I was instantly hooked. Being a self-directed project, it was really fun having the opportunity to experiment with different research techniques and run my first usability test.
This was also my first experience diving into UX/UI design. I taught myself how to use tools like Adobe XD and Marvel to realize and share my ideas. And, since development was being done by a 3rd party, it was the first time I needed to hand-off my ideas to another group of people to execute.
Overall, having all of these firsts in one project meant that I learned a lot in a really short amount of time. Although the solutions weren’t perfect and I was only able to make small tweaks to the interface, I owe a lot to this project as it truly paved the way for my eventual career in Product Design.
DIY testing rig
In order to run the pilot usability study, I ended up building my own in-person testing rig with a laptop, iPhone, selfie stick, and, of course, ukulele stand... gotta do whatcha gotta do when there’s a $0 budget.