Electric Stride
An exercise mat for people with Parkinson's Disease to train their gait using embedded LED lights for visual cues and pressure-based location prediction to lengthen their walking strides.
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Introduction
Project Background
People with Parkinson's Disease of various stages have varied types of motor and non-motor symptoms that impact their lifestyles and how their caregivers attend to them.
Within the context of this extended Hack-a-thon competition, I worked in a student group of ten to find innovative ways to improve the quality of life for Parkinson's patients and caregivers.
I Interacted With...
Teammates
April Gau, Christie Wolters, David Laub, Dawn Ye, Emilia Pokta, Enrique Zavala, Jacqueline Lee, Ludi Sabalburo, Willy Ma
Event Supervisor and Coordinator
Chelsea Largoza
Competition Mentors from IBM
Damon Deaner and Karel Vredenburg
People Impacted By Parkinson's
Patients, Caregivers, and Domain Experts
My Contributions Summarized
- supporting user research activities and photo/video documentation
- supporting data synthesis and ideation efforts for different problem spaces and solutions
- creating the initial interfaces for the first version of our team's solution
- scheduling and facilitating in-person, moderated user testing sessions with Parkinson's patients in a rock steady boxing class
- contributing to final competition deliverables and live presentation
Initial Research
Desk research contributed to a mind map for understanding topics in Parkinson's:
- symptoms and treatments
- relevant people involved with Parkinson's and their everyday experiences
- existing organizations tackling Parkinson's
These efforts informed my facilitation of team dot-voting of topics and questions to ask for patients, caregivers, and domain experts (initially named as “medical professionals”).
Data Synthesis
Brainstormed with team to inform initial problem spaces.
- Contributed to sticky note ideas to an affinity diagram.
- Dot voted during a brainstorming workshop to contribute group consensus of prioritized problem spaces from my teammates, IBM competition mentors, an industry designer, a patient, and a caregiver.
Based on this dot voting, initial problem spaces emerged.
Maintaining Agency
Need from patients and caregivers to live out their daily lifestyles without Parkinson's affecting their daily routines.
How might we enable patients and caregivers to have as much time as possible to do daily activities and hobbies that they want to engage in?
Live Symptom Awareness
Need from patients, caregivers, and medical professionals to actively monitor and manage the progression of a patient's Parkinson's.
How might we enable them to stay informed of the issues and treatments needed to address the patient's symptoms?
Social interactions
Need for support groups, or other ways to promote interactions and bonding between patients.
How might we sustain such a commmunity amongst Parkinson's patients to improve their daily life?
Ideation
Helped Ideate Aspects of Team's Initial Solution
Contributed to more sticky note brainstorming and affinity diagramming sessions to figure out:
- the first solution that the team wanted to focus on.
- which features of the first solution we wanted to prioritize making.
Prototyping
Prototyped Two Interface Mockups of the Smart Bottle App
Translated research, storyboard, and visual design artifacts into two software interface mockups, shown in one of our team's slide deck presentations.
Presented a Slide Deck Showing Team's Initial Solution
Solution Pivoting
Revisited Online Research to Help Redefine Problem Spaces and Solutions to Pivot
This effort was based on the competition judges critiques of my team's solution. In comparison to other teams' solutions, our team's lack of novelty and potential impact were other factors that informed team's decision to pivot.
New Problem Spaces
Maintaining Agency
Need from patients and caregivers to live out their daily lifestyles without Parkinson's affecting their daily routines.
Parkinson's Gait
Unusual gait and related motor symptoms are highly disruptive to people with Parkinson's and can interfere with their movement and daily activities. Experiences of shuffling and leaning forward make them susceptible to possibly fatal falls.
Final Solution Chosen - Exercise Floor Tiles
Two reasons why my team chose this solution:
- Inspiration of 3D optical illusions in floor rugs and exercise equipment complimented previously explored non-pharmaceutical interventions: exercise routines.
- Strong relevance to new prioritized problem spaces.
My other team members built the first version of the mat.
User Testing
Helped to Test and Gather Feedback
Half the team developed the mat. I was with the other half to test the floor tiles.
I handled schedule coordination, media documentation, and user testing facilitation within a previously visited home and a rock-steady-boxing gym class that had a group of people with Parkinson's.
Eventually, I contributed to consolidating the feedback as a spreadsheet that would be used for other team members to further iterate on the final version of the mat.
Final Deliverables
Stride, the Electric Mat
Stride aims to improve patients' gait using LED lights for training their gait and walking stride length.
Final Poster
- Initially worked with one teammate to provide guidelines of the visual style guide.
- Drafted initial and finalized content & layout of poster, other members later pitched in.
Visitors and judges saw the printed poster and the final design of our mat during a public symposium.
Final Presentation (Slide Deck)
Drafted slides that summarized our team's design process, testing, and future iterations of our final solution.
Presenting Our Work
Presented with two other people our final design, poster, and presentation to a panel of judges.
Panel consisted of our mentors, other IBM representatives, Parkinson's patients and caregivers, and other visitors.
We won 1st place in the competition!
Reflection
This project was one of the greatest tests to my design skill set, but also one the most rewarding learning experiences I've ever had. I learned the importance of:
- design ownership and practice combined with real-world constraints
- continuously learning about your team members' way of collaborating to ensure successful execution of the design process
- applicability of feedback to fail fast, move forward, and rethink our team's chosen solutions and approaches to building solutions
If I had more time, I would:
- re-test assumptions about how patients, caregivers, and domain experts would use the mat in different situations, environments, and activities
- better understand how other topics such as socio-economic status, current market forces, and diverse backgrounds of more people would impact lifestyles of people involved with Parkinson's
- further investigate how desirable and usable the mat is for patients, caregivers, and domain experts
