Work Sample 2: Annotation App for Understanding the Mental Models of Occupational and Physical Therapists

Motivation:

Understanding the mind and mental model of a therapist is extremely difficult. Each therapist has their own unique experiences, which impact the type of feedback they give to patients. I aimed to address this problem through the Video Annotation App I developed. The purpose of this app was to create a standardized process for therapists to use while assessing stroke survivors to reduce bias while simultaneously providing feedback to therapists on how to improve their assessment model. The goal of this work was to look at rehabilitation assessment through the lens of research and design and develop a human-centric way in which therapists and computers could work together, vs. computers replacing therapists.

Research question(s):

  1. How can a quantitative, qualitative, and standardized assessment framework assist therapists’ practice?

  2. What are the design implications of building assistive applications for therapists in ways that reduce time and bias?

Research goals:

  • Identify and understand therapists' minds and mental models from a design and computational approach.

  • Determine how to optimize the experience for therapists in a way that reduces bias and standardized their assessment framework.


Research & Design Methods:

  • Focus Groups, 1:1 Interviews, healthcare design, iterative design process, service design model, usability evaluations, and user-flow models.


Number of Users:

  • 20+ occupational and physical therapists

Outcomes of my work and project impact: 

  • The Therapist App has been evaluated at the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab in Chicago, Emory Hospital, University of Southern California, and Virginia Tech. Outcomes from my work have resulted in an NIH grant of 5.0 million USD  

  • Over 20 clinical therapists have used this Therapist App, and it is currently being evaluated in research trials in a hospital setting.

  • This work was awarded as an NIH and NSF Fellow.

  • Research and Design from the Therapist App have also resulted in me receiving offers from Meta (Facebook), Google, Amazon, Robinhood, Roku, and HBO Max. 

Video Annotation App for understanding and replicating the therapist assessment model .

Iteration 1:

Iteration 1 of the Video Application App:

Iteration 2:

Iteration 2 of the Video Application App:

Iteration 3:

Iteration 3 of the Video Application App:

Therapist Experience through using the Therapist App (1/2)

Therapist Experience through using the Therapist App (2/2)