Helping patients
walk again
See how Nova designed the medical device user experience of the Alter G anti-gravity treadmill, a rehabilitation tool for patients and athletes.
Results & Outcomes
North star vision
Product validation with testing committee
Scope
Patient treadmill and physical therapist experiences
Project length
Physical
therapy
audiences
PHYSICAL THERAPISTS
” I need to be able to see my patients progress in real-time, and use that data to make more effective plans of care. “
REHABILITATION PATIENTS
” The Alter G treadmill helps me lessen the weight on my knees when I walk, but it’s also hard at times to know if I’m making progress.”
PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES
” Whenever I get injured, I use the Alter G treadmill to maintain my fitness, and it gets my game back to 100%, faster. “
Problem
How do we create a medical device user experience for an innovative treadmill that makes it easier for physical therapists to treat patients in order to improve their ability to walk and run?
Product discovery
In order to understand the patient product experience better, we went to their facility in Fremont, CA to see what it feels like to run at half your body weight.
You can see that the patented shorts zip into a an air tight bag that fills up with air. In order to calibrate your body to the machine, the device will modulate the pressure of the bag, creating the “weightlessness” that patients experience during a session.
The treadmill
If you want to see what it’s like to use an Alter G, this video shows you how it works.
Wire framing the digital interface
After a workshop in Tulsa, OK, put together a rough prototype that we would test with physical therapists and clinicians in the local area to get their feedback.
North star vision
Once we received feedback, we began to create high-fidelity walkthroughs that we would use to demo to prospective customers, board members, and team members. Having a hands-on prototype really helps get actionable feedback.
Starting a session
Starting a session entailed having the Alter G machine calibrate your body weight to create the feeling of weightlessness..
A real-time analysis tool
When we’re able to capture different camera angles of a patients gate, and combine it with data like pain and bodyweight %, we can create meaningful analysis about a patient’s progress in-session, in real-time.
In session
A session was made up of several tools for the clinician, but it also contained several different views for the education and entertainment of the patient. So we created nature scenes and training materials that would help them engage with the machine while in-session.
Progress analysis
Clinicians and patients at the end of a session will go over their progress. So we included several different ways of looking at their progress.
Onboarding
physical therapy
We also worked on the physical therapist experience that included onboarding and setup of their facilities.
10,000 ft.
view
For admins, being able to see how several different facilities are engaging with the Alter G treadmill is important for performance benchmarking. So we created a multi-location view that gives meaningful insight into the broader medical device user experience.
Training
and education
Admins and physical therapists would also work together to construct custom training videos. These videos would be included in the Alter G treadmill sessions directly impacting the patient in-session experience and plan of care.
Patient view
Being able to see all of the patients in one view allows for quick access to important information on overall progress.
