Support for the exercises your physio gave you.
Physiq is a prototype to help people keep up a home exercise programme set by their physiotherapist or doctor. It does not diagnose, prescribe or replace a clinician. Accessibility is a design aim, so it is being built with disabled people and people with long-term conditions in mind.
A home exercise programme only helps if it can be followed safely.
What the research says so far
I plan to use three methods together: a literature review, a survey and interviews. The literature review is well under way and is summarised below. The survey and interviews will only go ahead once my project’s ethics approval is confirmed, so I have no results from people yet.
Who it’s for
These are fictional personas used for design. They are not research participants, and the portraits are AI-generated pictures of people who do not exist.
Existing apps
These are the three nearest products I have checked so far: two accessible fitness apps and one app for back pain physiotherapy. What is described here comes from public sources and I have not tested the apps myself. The sketches are my own drawings from those descriptions, not their real screens. A fuller review of physiotherapy programme apps is still to do, and I will not guess at what they do.
From sketches to the app
The design now has its own page. It has my process, the design decisions and the reasons behind them, the accessibility choices, wireframes from the first fitness version to the physio app, and real screenshots of the old and new app.
See the design pageWhat Physiq does
My supervisor suggested I look at these two areas. I have not added either to the app. They are specialist areas where the treating team decides which exercises are safe for each person, so Physiq would only ever help someone follow the programme their own team gave them, the same as for a knee or a back.
Before I add anything I need to read the research, speak to a specialist physiotherapist if I can, and make sure my ethics approval covers it. Until then this is a plan, not a feature.
Accessibility is the starting point
I am designing for the hardest cases first, such as someone in a flare-up. This is a design aim, and I will test it rather than assume it.
Testing and feedback
Feedback is not open yet. I will only open it once my project’s ethics approval is confirmed, and until then nothing on this page collects answers. The tasks below show what testing will involve.
How it’s built
Blessing Masukwedza
Final year BSc Information Technology student at Teesside University. Physiq is my final year project. I use AI tools while building it, and I will declare how in my report.
What I have read
Harvard style, Cite Them Right. For some of the journal papers I have so far read the abstract, so I only use what the abstract reports until I have read the full paper. This list will grow as the literature review continues.