Date
Dec 2020
Client
Internal Project
Lightbridge Inc.
Role
Lead Designer
Mobile App
Lightbridge
Have you ever tried to work after experiencing a concussion or a hangover? The most simple tasks become complicated, and staying focused is like wrangling cats. Most of us are lucky that we only have to do this once in a while, but for the people we would be helping here, that state of mind is a daily struggle.
When Joy Lewis first came to me describing the issues traumatic brain injury (TBI) survivors face, she wanted to build an app that would restore functionality to their lives. After her son experienced a car accident, Joy set out to make life easier for him and anyone struggling with the same issues. The task seemed enormous. A traumatic brain injury affects almost every aspect of life: eating, exercising, chores, traveling, you name it. How could we design an application that would make every aspect of life manageable?
This is the story of the solution to this impossible problem.
This problem struck me personally because I had struggled with learning disabilities and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as a child. Later in life I had gone on a self improvement binge, intentionally adopting the belief that ADHD was nothing more than a label, and anything I was frustrated with was something I could overcome.
I read many books about mental health issues and discovered that a large amount of what I attributed as ADHD was simply bad productivity habits. Some of which included:
In short, the cause of my suffering wasn’t necessarily my ADHD. It was my perspective. As I slowly addressed each of these bad habits with my life coach, I noticed different aspects of my previously “unconquerable” ADHD slowly lessen its grip on my life.
TBI is a serious condition that has life altering consequences; however, what if some positive productivity principles could be applied to help the TBI survivors with their daily lives?
My first step was to seek empathy with the people whom I would be serving. I tried to do my best to relate to them both directly to our shared experience, while, at the same time, being a detached observer.
The first step was to speak with Joy’s inspiration, her son. In this video, he breaks down some of his daily struggles.
In my conversations with him, I learned that Jordan struggled with:
I interviewed a number of other TBI survivors that reported similar issues with some variance.
The unusual context of TBI as an injury, is that there really is no consistency around what aspects of life are affected. If your memory center is damaged, the memory suffers. If your language center is damaged, speaking suffers.
In talking to Jordan, I did notice many negative patterns I read about. The cause was clearly the injury, but my conjecture was that these negative habits formed from the anxiety of attempting to live normally within a society that couldn’t empathize with the experience of living with TBI.
We would never be able to restore daily functioning back to a pre-injury state with an app, but if we could implement some positive habits into the lives of TBI survivors, we could restore confidence in their ability to accomplish the tasks needed to enjoy life.
When I looked at the reported deficiencies in the ability to accomplish tasks, they bore a similarity to what I had struggled with myself - the ability to hold information temporarily in the mind, or working memory.
The average person can hold five to seven items in working memory, but it reduces to two or three in compromised minds. This means the awareness needed to accomplish tasks can be lost quickly. While three “slots” may be devoted to the task at hand, two might be needed to maintain social awareness, and one to keep track of the context of the task. So, upon the briefest interruption from others or the slightest disturbance in mood, the context of the task could be disrupted. I found this to be the most universal explanation for why patients lose track of what they are doing in the middle of a task.
Joy’s project was originally intended to help traumatic brain injury survivors, but potential benefactors include people who struggle with anxiety, depression, ADHD, epilepsy, or a multitude of other impairments.
My team discovered that, according to CDC research, many people could benefit:
This is the global process I took for the design of the app:
Joy had previous designs for the application. While I am happy to draw from past work, it has a tendency to pollute the problem. Before beginning any design work, it is key to understand the client’s needs from first-principles. This usually includes what the design needs to be successful (design objectives) and what tasks users will need to complete in order to be satisfied with the offering (user intents).
Design Objectives
User Intents
I usually start by turning the user intent into a list of screens as sticky notes, and arrange them to determine the navigation structure of the app. I use Miro, the virtual whiteboard tool, so it’s easy to rearrange and iterate.
After completing the flow I began iterating on wireframes to get an idea of how we would layout each screen. I ran each wireframe against my design objectives, scrutinizing and looking for improvements. I like to take extra care to experiment in this phase, as changes in wireframes are much easier to make than changes in design.The solution taken by existing competitors, Sanvello and Coach.me, involves either static workflows for each life domain or a simple habit tracker for different domains of life. In Joy’s previous designs, the approach was also to create a unique system for each domain.
However, this posed a huge problem. How do we account for unknown unknowns? It is common for one designer's idea of a solution to not fit exactly with every user’s needs. This would be especially important in the case of TBI victims, as one injury could have vastly different impacts on the experience than the next. Static workflows do not account for the variety of experience changes that can come from a brain injury, and a habit tracker without a workflow only adds load to working memory.
We looked at different methods for breaking down complexity. One idea was to have a to-do list where each task would have a seamless subtasking tool. Another was to create a set of processes and appointments where people could make repeatable routines and assign them to tasks and appointments.
For our MVP, I decided to simplify to a single unit, a repeatable routine. Users would have the ability to preview them, build their own routines, and schedule them into a daily calendar view.
To create the flexibility users needed, I designed a custom workflow builder that allows patients to add as many or as few steps as needed to accomplish anything they struggle with. For example, users wishing to make breakfast could use the app to make a list of every step needed to prepare their meal. The steps could be as detailed or simple as needed. They could have one step for each pan they need to remove from the cabinet, or they could place all of the equipment within one step.
The routine builder consists of a list of steps that can be rearranged. A detailed step view allows users to add photos demonstrating any step visually.
When users are happy with the structure of their routine, they can schedule the task. Then it shows as part of a daily to-do list, which includes their calendar events for the day. This allows users to see everything they need to accomplish at a glance.
From the Routine Builder and the My Day view, users have the ability to play the routine step by step, focusing on one task at a time. Each step takes up the full screen, along with an image if added. A progress bar at the top of the screen shows ongoing progress, which serves as a motivator and provides positive reinforcement.
When users finish a routine, the total number of times they have finished that routine shows, giving them a global sense of accomplishment on their total progress.
To start connecting people, users have a button to share a routine. They just press the share button at the top, and it can be sent out to anyone in their contacts.
For testing the prototype, I recruited some members of the TBI community. After making a high-fidelity prototype, I used my favorite way to test: direct user testing.
Users need to imagine themselves in the situations that will arise while they are actually using the app. To accomplish this, I like to place the prototype in front of them providing zero context, and then use prompts that speak to the intent of the individual and leave out the names of features. This prevents making the test into a word search.
Example Prompts:
We ran a study with 40 TBI individuals to find the pain points of the software.
The settings button was placed on the top right of My Day, but I found that when users went to different parts of the app, and were asked one of the prompts that required accessing settings, it quickly created frustration.
TBI Survivors are an interesting group because they couldn’t rely on memory to locate features and buttons. Each screen would have to be so self-explanatory that people could understand it as if seeing it for the first time.
For settings, we added the button to more screens where they would most commonly be spending their time.
To give people inspiration, routine templates were added to the browser. These exemplar routine templates pigeonholed the possibilities of the app in users’ minds. The question users seemed to ask of themselves was: “Which of these routines can be useful to me?” rather than “What tasks within my day could I create custom guidance for?”
In an app that provided infinite possibilities, users started only thinking about the templates. Creating routines needed more attention drawn to it, and I wanted to add a different way of showcasing creative potential.
I wanted to see if just a simple attention change would solve the problem, so we used a tutorial library to focus the add button if they haven’t created their own routine. If that doesn’t work, I’ll be rearranging the design to make the choice between adding and choosing a template more distinct.
The routine player had a progress bar that moved with every step, which was intended to spur the user
In the beta test, people liked the feature for short routines, but it backfired when the users had a long routine. Watching the progress bar inch along made users wonder how much they had left to do.
A possible solution we may try is to add the step count for the progress bar.
The app is live and people are using it to help with their daily lives. The schedule, routine player, and routine builder, all proved to help the people using it. Currently, our biggest challenge is onboarding. It takes a unique solution to solve a unique problem, but the issue with unique solutions is that it takes time for users to wrap their heads around them. I’m currently searching for users that have never used the app before to understand which parts of the onboarding journey are confusing and where guidance is needed.
I loved working with the Lightbridge Team. Shoutout to the fantastic developers at Walturn and Very Good Ventures for helping bring Joy’s vision to life. I am so proud of Lightbridge because it helps a community that really needs support and guidance in a way that is difficult for most people to understand.
