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Motivational PT Web App
Responsive web application that tracks physical therapy patients' progress and motivates them throughout recovery
Overview
Mend transforms physical therapy into a rewarding experience with personalized goals, guided exercises, and real-time progress tracking from physical therapists. Users can stay engaged with streaks, achievements, and milestones that celebrate every win, big or small. Mend helps patients stay on track and see real progress no matter the injury type or timeline.
Over the course of nine months, I worked within an interdisciplinary 6-person team to design and develop Mend, a motivational physical therapy web app. As Project Manager, I led the alignment of research insights and design decisions to define product requirements and drive a functional coded prototype validated through usability testing.
By the conclusion of validation testing, Mend was proven to be successful, with participants reporting an increase in motivation by ~50%. Additionally, all features were validated, with several receiving praise for transforming their experience with physical therapy.
I was really satisfied because you never really get that much information when you’re actually at the physical therapist.
Usability Testing Participant
My Role
​I served as Project Manager, leading UX research and content strategy, and supporting desktop design as needed.
Primary Contributions:
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Planned and conducted research, usability testing, and validation efforts
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Owned content strategy for exercises, goals, and achievements
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Defined design requirements by identifying design gaps, edge cases, and interaction states to aid in developer handoff
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Designed responsive desktop screens using the existing design system
Tools
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Figma
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​FigJam
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Jira
Target Audience
The target audience included adults ages 18–34 who were currently attending or had previously attended physical therapy for a first-time or recurring injury. To further narrow the scope, Mend’s content focused specifically on individuals within this group recovering from knee injuries since this was the most common injury identified in our survey responses.
The Problem
Through surveys and interviews, we learned that physical therapy offices often overlook the mental aspect of recovery. Patients rarely have access to their progress data, which can make the recovery process feel discouraging.
Patients reported challenges in three key areas that contributed to their lack of motivation:
01
02
03
At-home support
Most clinics provide paper packets or video demonstrations, which are not personalized or motivating for patients
Accountability
Without support from their physical therapists at home, patients struggle to stay accountable and keep up with their at-home exercises between physical therapy sessions
Progress Metrics
Physical therapists take measurements and track detailed recovery metrics, but patients rarely see this data, leaving them to wonder about their improvement
The data further emphasized these issues:
0%
of interview participants (n = 6) said they had access to progress data throughout their recovery
90%
of survey participants (n = 40) reported feeling unmotivated during their recovery process
Through market research, I discovered that the leading competitors offering digital tools for physical therapy are white-label solutions provided to clinics with minimal customization. Patients who used these apps described them as “clinical” and “bland,” highlighting an opportunity to create a friendly, engaging solution that actually motivates patients to complete their physical therapy exercises at home.
Goals and Objectives
The Mend team aimed to:
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Develop a fully responsive web app accessible on mobile and desktop devices
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Improve patient motivation through gamification and progress tracking
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Ensure high usability and user satisfaction, evaluated through testing with representative users
The Process
After gathering initial insights from patients and physical therapists through surveys and interviews, the design team began working on mobile designs that addressed user needs. After each round of design iteration, I co-led usability testing sessions and analyzed the data to support data-driven recommendations offered to the design team. Once mobile designs were nearly complete, I aided the designers by creating desktop designs using the existing design system, ensuring scalability and design consistency across screen sizes.
There was no one to tell me if I was getting any better or stronger. I just got a printout of exercises and was told, ‘You got this.’
Patient Interview Participant
Research: Surveys & Interviews
​I collaborated with another UX researcher to conduct interviews and surveys with both physical therapists and patients to understand their needs, behaviors, and pain points. Physical therapist insights revealed the core data points they consistently track, which provided a clear understanding of the structured data Mend would always have access to. We also learned about the motivational strategies physical therapists use during in-person sessions, which provided a basis for how those same dynamics could be reflected in Mend. These insights directly informed Mend’s progress tracking data visualizations and tone toggle feature.
Key Physical Therapist Insights:
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Track data such as range of motion and strength across patients and injury types
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Varying motivational strategies, such as offering words of encouragement or tough love
On the patient side, we focused on gaining insights into the emotional highs and lows of the physical therapy experience.
Key Patient Insights:
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Frustration with not being able to see tangible progress over time
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Receiving paper packets of exercises felt unengaging and unhelpful
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Valued verbal feedback from physical therapists, especially when it was tailored to how they were feeling that day
These insights directly shaped features such as data visualizations of their progress metrics, goals and achievements translating their accomplishments to real-world milestones, and motivational tone variations based on which style they resonate with most. Across three rounds of usability testing and one round of validation testing, we made small but meaningful adjustments to these features to reduce confusion and better align with patients’ needs during recovery.
Progress Metrics & Tone Customization Features
I think that these [achievements] would keep me super motivated, and then it's like a talking point, right? Like 'oh, I walked the height of the Statue of Liberty'
Usability Testing Participant
Research-Driven Content Creation
​I also conducted online research to understand goal timelines for knee injuries and to ensure content aligned with real clinical recovery expectations. I used this information to translate clinical physical therapy data into motivating content that helped patients understand why exercises mattered and how progress connected to real-life outcomes.
Responsibilities:
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Created a list of 10 knee exercises prescribed by a real physical therapist with step-by-step instructions and potential modifications
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Built a catalogue of unique goals based on actual PT milestones and translated them to user-friendly goals with real-life applications
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Crafted achievements based on distance, strength, and time metrics and translated them to real-life applications
Achievements, Streaks, & Goals Features
UX Requirements Process
As Project Manager, I led weekly meetings to discuss design requirements to identify missing design states and clarify interaction design behaviors to ensure smooth handoff to the developers.
My Process:
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Created color-coded annotations for the most up-to-date version of each screen design
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Flagged content that needed a tough love vs. kind tone variant
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Documented open questions regarding states, behaviors, and content
Open questions & interaction behaviors documented for UX requirements discussion
Design: Iterative Research-Driven Process
The UX/UI designers created iterative designs that were transformed into interactive Figma prototypes for low-fidelity, mid-fidelity, and high-fidelity testing. Each round of usability testing comprised six users, either first-time users or previous participants who had participated in an earlier round of testing. As I presented the findings from each round of testing, I ensured research insights guided each iteration.
Transformation to High-Fidelity Designs
One key feature that was revisited was the “hold to complete” interaction, which users found unintuitive across multiple rounds of testing. To improve clarity, the designers added an edit mode for selecting completed exercises. This flow tested well, but users were confused by the call-to-action label. This was resolved by a quick copy tweak that smoothed the experience.
Usability testing also revealed confusion about where data like goals and progress stats came from. Many didn’t realize it was provided by their physical therapist. To address this, the designers added onboarding for each feature, updated copy on the goals page, and included info icons on graphs to clarify data sources.
Design: Scaling to Desktop
I worked closely with the lead UI designer to adapt Mend’s mobile designs for desktop, flagging when design system components required additional variants to ensure adaptability and consistency across desktop designs. The biggest challenge was scaling the app’s organic shapes in a way that preserved the look and feel of the mobile designs, by manually adjusting anchor points, rather than simply stretching elements to fit a larger screen size. I also considered how users would navigate the app on desktop, deciding on a sidebar navigation to make it easy for users to know what page they are on and easily access their options to switch between light and dark mode as well as tough and kind tone. Click behaviors were consistent with mobile, and hover states were added in the design requirements documentation to make it clear which elements were interactive given the capabilities of having a visible cursor on desktop devices. When conducting validation testing, participants were allowed to interact with the desktop version of the app or scale down their screen to simulate a mobile web app experience. Ultimately, there were no major changes noted regarding the design, functionality, and navigation between the different screen sizes.
Mobile & Desktop Design Comparisons
The Results
​The final round of usability testing, conducted with six users, validated the effectiveness of Mend. Results confirmed strong performance across all key areas.
90%
felt motivated by at-home support features, including guided exercises, tone customization, and pain/mood check-ins
95%
felt motivated by accountability features, including streaks, achievements, and goals
100%
felt motivated by progress stats, including recovery metrics and monthly recaps
Most importantly, all participants reported an increase in their motivation of approximately 50% after using Mend compared to when they started physical therapy—demonstrating that motivation is not only possible, but attainable, with Mend. These results validated that addressing the emotional and motivational aspects of physical therapy can meaningfully improve patient engagement and adherence.
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