The purpose of this study is to explore some of the different variables that influence the recovery process for athletes and to create a user experience that will offer greater reliability, efficiency and usefulness with regards to sports recovery.

The goal is to analyze the different types of recovery methods athletes avail of during their recovery and determine whether or not they are successful to their rehabilitation.

User Interviews

For every UX case study project, I always tend to invest majority of the time into the research phase. This is like digging up for gold. You need to know where, how and until when. Dedication and right tools are more important than just sheer luck 😬.

As a team of two, We ended up getting 6 participants most relative to the study area for our qualitative analysis.

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At the start of any project or in the beginning of the research phase, I try to come up with research questions/ topic guide that can guide my design process.

• Behavioural - What the person does before and after an injury. 
• Opinions/values - What a person thinks about the topic. 
• Thinking - What is the thought process of the person during the recovery phase.
• Feelings - What a person really feels. 
• Knowledge - How much he/she knows about it and strives to get to know more. 
• Sensory - What he/she has seen, touched and heard.

Some of the quotes from interview transcripts :

Problems categorisation

After all the mind mapping and hunt for common themes out of all the interviews, we ended up with following common problematic areas :-

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Injury Education - Cultural Probing

Unlike direct observation, this technique allows users to self report the specific events, feelings or interactions in their usual environment.

Users were given the following artifacts to fill. 

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Physical recovery probe - Video Journals

Video journals are helpful to understand the user’s experience with recovery, and also a testing ground for the integration of technology into the recovery process.

Participant was given the task of recording and documenting his prescribed exercise routine provided by his team physio.

Physical recovery journey mapping

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Mental recovery process probe - Scattered words

Each participant was asked to circle words that they associated with the mental recovery process. Approximately 20 participants were provided with the sheet, with a high portion of users opting to circle confusion, physio, break and frustration.

Approximately 20 participants were provided with the sheet, with a high portion of users opting to circle confusion, physio, break and frustration. This exercise helped to uncover some of the major insights

• Large proportion of participants were confused (10) and frustrated (8) about their recovery process
• 8 responses to "Break"
• "Interactions" like friends, home, parents being ranked the lowest

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Mental recovery process probe - Blank canvas

The probe was related to Mental aspect of injury recovery which was perhaps the most insightful yielding intimate results which could not be captured through interviews.

Participants were provided with a blank canvas and asked to draw what their injury felt like.

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Team meaning probe - Online survey

To explore the team meaning probe and reach a wider audience, an online survey was conducted. The following image is a snapshot of responses the team was able to get out of a group of 23 rugby players.

The survey was a multiple choices one with multiple entries enabled.

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Team meaning probe - Visual cards

To further study about the socio-emotional aspect of the whole recovery process and the emotional-support well being, participants were asked to mark the visual depictions they could relate to associated with the teammates cheering and support

“How do your teammates cheer you up?/ How do they support each other?”
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Insights after markdown from 12 participants:-

• Players prefer to stay in touch with their team mates 
• If on recovery break, they would want to indulge with their friends in social activities
• Doing fitness trainings, gym and going for team matches proves to be a cheering factor

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The data collected from the interviews and cultural probes provided crucial insights into the recovery process. The use of video collection, card sorting and artefacts offers a rigorous but rewarding method. The research gave a broad view of the experience of the ‘participants’ allowing to easily breakdown the emotions and feeling of the users at each stage of the process while also understanding the different touch points that they experienced.

The four themes created and the insights collected from the interviews, research and cultural probes helped to come up with an "Emotional Goal Modal" :

Problem Statement

The most common insight/theme out of all the research inclined towards the feeling of "lack of control" over the situation. The frustration adds up when it comes to the uncertainty of the position in team, no timeline over recovery process and tailored support by care professionals. For this project, we went with the following "How might we" statement :-

“How might we help sports athletes to have better control over their recovery process”

Concepts Development

Multiple concepts were explored in order to achieve desirability, feasibility and viability for our participants and stakeholders. Following are the outcomes of the concept designing phase when discussed with my fellow product design friends

• VR Doctor concept - The proposed solution would allow injured players to scan and view their injury at home and then receive an accurate diagnosis from an AI assistant built into a supporting mobile application. 
• VR is innovative and new but something that is not accessible to all users. The cost of VR equipment is the reason for this.
• Combining a 3-D scanning functionality into a smartphone can made the concept viable and accessible to all users.
• When asked, Users did not feel that AI ( a robot 🤖in their words 😜 )could correctly diagnose them or help them with their recovery process
• This lead to a concept  that does a preliminary diagnosis from the AI assistant and then forward their scans to a qualified physio to get an actual diagnosis and recovery plan.

ANOVA Analysis

This was the first time I used ANOVA analysis for user testing. "Analysis of variance", ANOVA, is a statistical technique that assesses potential differences in a scale level variable, throughout three or more groups. In preparing our ANOVA variables, we decided to create ten questions to compare our concept, Scan+, against the available alternatives.

The two groups chosen to compare against were a competitor virtual doctor app, available on iOS and Android and attending a physical confrontation with a real doctor.

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Once our two comparisons were chosen, three surveys were created for all the three services using typeform and distributed to separate, unrelated groups. Each survey contained the same 10 questions across each and were all answered on a scale of 1-7, 1 being the worst result and 7 being the best possible result.

The following ten questions were asked across the three surveys to help us analyse which experience was better. Each survey featured a sample size of 30 participants, totalling to 90 participants throughout all surveys.

ANOVA questions :-

• The concept is clear & understandable.
• The concept is easy to use.
• The concept evokes feeling of comfort.
• The concept evokes an empathic approach to my recovery.
• The concept looks authoritative.
• The concept looks informative.
• The concept makes me feel in control of my recovery.
• The concept makes me feel supported.
• The concept is an efficient service.
• The concept makes me feel less dependable on others.
  
  

This study covered the varying facets of Sports recovery and injury. The aim was to ascertain “below the surface” insights to then design a solution around these pain points. The problem of sports recovery simply cannot be solved as it often unexpected and unpredictable. However the post injury experience and process of recovery can.

These research techniques allowed us to collect vast amounts of data. The data collected from these exercises was then categorised into themes and the insights extracted. Some of the most prominent insights that we uncovered were:
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• Injured Players seek a way to track their progress with regards their injuries.
• Injured Players feel helpless and out of control during the recovery process.
• Injured players feel isolated throughout the recovery process.
• Injured Players undergo a mental injury as well as a physical injury.