PhysioFix

PhysioFix is an injury recovery app used by medical professionals to support their patients through rehabilitation. It allows users to log their progress, complete daily exercises, and access mindfulness tools, while physiotherapists receive consistent data for tracking recovery.

Designed for iOS, the app aims to boost motivation, reduce stress, and speed up the healing process through structure, clarity, and a supportive user experience.

Project information

Health & Fitness
3 members from our study group
UX-design, flows, interaction design, prototyping
1 week
iOS-app

The Challenge

Recovery from shoulder injuries can take months, and it’s easy for motivation to drop off. Our core user, Chris, often forgets his exercises, gets frustrated with slow progress, and isn’t sure how well he’s actually doing. Meanwhile, physiotherapists need reliable, structured data to monitor how things are going and adapt treatment plans accordingly.

The brief required a full user journey, from sign-up to progress tracking, including key features like pain check-ins, general well-being logs, an exercise tracker, meditation access, and a calendar overview.

Our task was to design a simple, focused iOS app that:

Encourages users to check in daily and complete their recovery routines.
Helps physiotherapists gather meaningful recovery data, while protecting privacy.
Feels supportive and effortless to use.
Offers additional stress-reducing tools like guided meditations.
Gives users a clear sense of their own progress.

Photo: User persona

Empathising with the user

Before diving into the design, we discussed how specific this app needed to be to the user’s context. It wasn’t just a fitness tracker—it had to reflect the real-world pain, limitations, and mental load of someone recovering from a shoulder injury.

We looked at other designs for inspiration (mostly from Dribbble), and drew on insights from earlier coursework, as well as general research into post-surgical recovery and physio routines.

Some important decisions early on:

The user would not add or customise exercises themselves—these are assigned by a medical professional.
Data entry should be as light and structured as possible—no free-text if we could avoid it.
Check-ins would be split between physical recovery and general well-being.

Photo: IA diagram

Ideating our solution

We started by defining the information architecture and user journey based on our persona – Chris, recovering from a shoulder injury. This helped clarify the app’s structure from the beginning.

We then sketched ideas using FigJam, dividing the screens between us and working collaboratively during live sessions. Inspired by our research, we prioritised a clear “check-in” system that lets users log pain and general well being.

Photo: Iterative sketches

We iterated based on feedback from each other and made adjustments after early sketches, especially around where data should originate and how it flows between user and practitioner.

We focused on simplicity and predictability, choosing to build on native iOS components to support familiarity and reassurance.

Prototyping our solution

We built a high-fidelity iOS prototype in Figma, focused on making every task feel lightweight, focused, and intuitive:

Sign-up & Onboarding 

Users sign up using email and password or with Apple/Google accounts. After registration, they enter a code from their practitioner to connect their data. We also added support for Face ID and a 2FA step to reflect the sensitivity of medical data.

Daily Check-in 

The first screen users see is the check-in page, where they log their daily recovery. A switcher lets users toggle between “Progress” (pain level rating on a 1–10 scale) and “General” (data about sleep, food, and activity). All inputs use predefined values within overlays — no free text.

Exercise Tracker 

The Exercise tab shows a grid of exercises assigned by the practitioner. Users can tap to mark each exercise as completed. Below the tracker is a list of exercises, with playable video instructions so users know how to perform them correctly.

Meditation Moments 

A dedicated tab offers short guided meditations to help users de-stress. The audio bar shows playback status, and the visual design is kept soft and simple.

Overview 

The calendar view shows diary entries and exercise completion over time. This gives the user a sense of their own progress and supports practitioner feedback.

The UI follows native iOS conventions, with smooth animations, clean spacing, and accessible design choices (including contrast-checked colour palette and keyboard navigation where relevant).

Photo: ...

Person holding a smartphone with a chat screen open, showing a conversation about a clinical experience and a message input box.

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Concluding the project

The final prototype includes smart animated transitions, visual affordance with shadows and button states, and UI patterns that follow standard iOS conventions. While we didn’t have time to user test, the design is structured for clarity and built around the needs of our defined persona.

We learned how important it is to narrow the solution to real, specific needs—in this case, Chris and his shoulder injury. We also found that small design decisions (like using toggles instead of free text) had a big impact on clarity and perceived effort.

The POUR and heuristic principles helped guide us throughout. We intentionally moved away from flat design, adding dimensionality to buttons and interactive states to improve accessibility and discoverability.

If we had more time, we would have loved to test how the app supports real-world behaviour change over time and explore additional ways the physiotherapist could personalise the content or offer feedback.