Existing approaches to monitoring athlete brain health are inadequate and a lack of standardised protocols has lead to reactive rather than preventive procedures. There is a need for data-driven software that enables standardised assessments and empowers sports physicians to safeguard athlete brain health. BrainCast had developed the algorithms for these protocols, but now needed a platform - MRIme, to package their process into a sleek, user-friendly web app.
Creating a product for such a niche area posed challenges in finding the right participants for user research. To address this, we consulted a small network of individuals from sports-related roles, including general managers, club physicians, and club CEOs to gain some valuable insights into what a product of this nature would require. We created some wireframes of how we envisioned the product would look, to discuss with our network.
Some things we identified through feedback were:
- Club physicians are busy people, often overseeing the health of multiple teams concurrently. It was crucial for us to ensure quick access to the overall brain health of the team. By doing so, physicians could efficiently gauge the collective well-being, saving time when no players were below average and allowing them to focus on more critical tasks.
- When players fell below average, we needed it to be clear. We discussed a simple 'traffic light' system, displaying athletes in green (healthy) or red (unhealthy) for easy recognition. If a player was in the red, the physician could check their individual results for a deeper dive.
- We had to incorporate both raw and simplified data. While sports physicians need accurate measurements and statistics, discussing these with athletes could be challenging. Therefore, the ability to simplify and display data easily was required.
In this phase of the design process, I opted for an iterative approach, rapidly creating wireframes and an initial prototype to subject to user testing for insights that could guide our subsequent design decisions. Although the initial prototype became somewhat of a 'frankenstein' due to throwing in as much as we could, this deliberate strategy helped us identify the most effective concepts. This helped us avoid potentially costly development errors, affording us the opportunity to refine the prototype before proceeding with the development phase.
Testing the product on a small group of users allowed us to identify the useful and not so useful parts of the product. From here we decided a few things:
- The difference in screens between individual and group views was not always apparent, and so we needed to make this more obvious.
- Navigation could be better refined, by introducing tab bars at the top of each view, users could cycle through the regions of the brain the same way they would with a physical report.
- Removing the current navigation system for selecting brain regions would give us more screen real estate, allowing us to maximise the amount of data displayed in the viewport.
- Pages needed some sort of visual representation, simply labeling areas was not always enough, if we could include visual representations for respective brain areas, it would allow club physicians to be confident in knowing what area of the brain they were investigating.
With our new testing insights, we were able to remove unnecessary features, add new, helpful features and streamline the product. As well as the changes made to the overview pages, we added more visual data linked to the algorithm's, and simplified the overall process.
Upon logging in to MRIme, club physicians gain immediate access to a comprehensive overview of all their patients within a specific team. The user-friendly interface uses colour-coded bars and a slider, facilitating a quick assessment of athletes whose health falls within a concerning range. In the presence of such concerns, physicians can seamlessly click on the respective athlete or conduct a search, directing them to an individualized dashboard. This personalized dashboard allows physicians to delve into specific regions of each part of the patients brain, providing detailed insights into the exact location of any identified health issues.
The completion of the product meant that BrainCast had a fully functional platform to move forward with. After demonstrating the power of the software to various company stakeholders, we were able to complete deals with sports teams in both the AFL and A-League, while also bolstering relationships with teams in the UK & US, as well as securing further investment for the company.