Introduction

Rehabilitation professionals specialized in recovery from CVA noticed a lack of adequate, high-quality treatment programs. With the consequence, low therapy compliance. The goal of Fast@Home was to create treatment programs that would inspire patients to keep working on their rehabilitation.

The challenge

Fast@Home didn't have a medium to connect with their audience (rehabilitation professionals, CVA patients) and to share their news, progress, and results.

The goal

To create and develop an informative website whereby rehabilitation professionals and CVA patients get a clear overview of the work Fast@Home is doing.

Duration

November 2015 - Februari 2016

My role

Research
Ideation
wireframing
Testing
Ui designing
Frontend development

Tools

photoshop

Illustrator

Invision

Research

The research phase was mostly focused on understanding CVA. Especially learning about the disabilities of CVA patients and understanding the consequences these disabilities have on the way patients experience and interact with 'digital' products.

I couldn't directly talk with patients, so I had to find other ways to get the information I needed. Desk research was a method to gain more basic knowledge about CVA. But to try to understand the patients and the limitations they have, I talked to members of FAST@HOME who have lots of experience with the rehabilitation of CVA patients. I also organized a brainstorm session with members of FAST@HOME and stakeholders. During this brainstorm, I gathered useful insights about accessibility issues patients have to deal with while using digital products.

CVA (cerebro vasculair accident)

2 types:

Cerebral infarction: Because of a silted vein or a blood clot, part of the brain gets too little blood supply.
Cerebral hemorrhage: A leak in a brain blood vessel

Demographics:

Both men and woman can suffer from a CVA
Mainly older people suffer from a CVA (60+)

Physical Consequences:

Cerebral infarction: Because of a silted vein or a blood clot, part of the brain gets too little blood supply.
paralysis
Hemianopia (part of sight is not functioning anymore)
incontinence
Epilepsy

Cognitive consequences:

Concentration disorder
Hypersensitive to external stimuli
Memory disorder
Difficulty in planning and doing daily tasks
Constant fatigue

Behavioral consequences:

Not being able to learn from previous experiences
Impatience or aggressive
Loss of self-reliance

Insights

By looking at the research insights, I knew I had to design a website that would be accessible for people with a physical or cognitive/behavioral disability. So, the site should be textually and visually simple enough for people who might have a memory or emotional disability, and the website should be easily navigatable for people that have a physical disability.

Value proposition

To formulate a general website concept and communicate my findings and ideas with Fast@Home and stakeholders, I created a value proposition.

"Only the information you need in the most accessible way!"

Paralysis, lack of concentration, epilepsy, aphasia, lousy sight, or another limitation because of CVA? The Fast@Home website provides information based on your needs in the most accessible way!

Adjustable font size, text-to-speech, big buttons
A2 level scannable articles supported with multimedia
Option to subscribe to the latest news

System requirements

To make the research insights concrete and functional, I formulated system requirements and prioritized them based on the MoSCoW methodology. Together with the client, we made a couple of iterations to get all the functional and non-functional requirements in place.

The website needs navigation without a dropdown menu (m)
The website needs big buttons (m)
The website needs to offer users a way to subscribe to the latest news (m)
The website gives an overview of all people involved in the research project (m)
The website needs to give users a way to increase the text-size by at least 2PT (m)
The level of language should be A2 (m)
The font family should be a sans serif (s)

The results

The result of this project is a responsive custom Wordpress template, which non-technical people can easily manage and update. Mockups were created before coding the template in HTML5, CSS and Javascript.

The website offers CVA patients information and the latest news about Fast@Home in an accessible way. Functionalities like increasing font size and text-to-speech allow everyone to access the site.

After finishing this project, FAST@HOME said they are delighted with the result because they have a way to reach their audience and share their stories!