Co-design of a tablet app for communicating inpatient brain injury rehabilitation goals

Abstract

The design of a tablet app for people with recent severe brain injuries is described, providing short videos outlining their current rehabilitation goals during inpatient rehabilitation. This research explored questions of desirability, functionality and usability. A co-design process was undertaken with clinicians and three current clients of such a brain injury service along with their family/whānau, iterating on a series of prototypes. Clinician, client and family participants responded positively to the concept and guided the design. Many design considerations reflected fairly universal principles—providing graphical/visual cues to complement text-based controls, and striving for a simple user interface and experience. The final design struck a balance between user control and a curated linear flow through app content. A sharp focus on the main objective was key—guiding rehabilitation goal setting best practice. The end result was an iPad app ready for clinical trial. Such tools may be able to contribute to rehabilitation processes through supporting client engagement, raising awareness of the purpose of rehabilitation, and thus potentially contributing to rehabilitation outcomes.