What is Intel's Incubator & PT Metrics?
Intel's Incubation and Disruptive Innovation (IDI) Group is an internal incubator that fosters the development of cutting-edge technologies and new business opportunities. It focuses on identifying and accelerating disruptive innovations outside of Intel's core product and leveraging emerging trends in AI.
PT Metrics is a product within Intel's incubator, it focuses on the physical therapy space. It delivers real-time guided physical therapy exercises while tracking detailed metrics to enhance patient outcomes and support recovery progress.
Role & Impact
Reported directly to the head of UX
Co-designed from concept to release
Worked closely with engineers and clinician consultants to help inform design decisions
Involved is user research including user interviews, surveys, usability tests to learn and improve product
93% Clinician Satisfaction Rate
Saving on average 45 minutes of clinician's time per day
Team
UX Manager
Engineering to understand limitations and feasibility
Physical Therapists for iterative feedback
Product owner to define user and business requirements
Users
https://www.framer.com/marketplace/components/progress-slideshow/
Human-Centered Design to Understand User Needs
*Blurred notes to protect NDA information
Top User Research Findings
Many traditional physical therapy assessments rely on visual estimation or manual goniometers, which are prone to human error.
Inconsistency in patient care can lead to incorrect progress tracking.
Subtle improvements might be overlooked, leading to ineffective adjustments to treatment plans.
Patients often struggle with exercise adherence due to lack of engagement.
Clinicians waste on average 2 hours per day on documentation.
Problem
How might we minimizes human error in physical therapy assessments, ensuring consistent and accurate progress tracking, while making subtle improvements more visible to clinicians for better treatment adjustments?
Clear Progress Tracking
Both patients and clinicians needed clear and objective progress tracking over time to inform treatment decisions and demonstrate effectiveness.
Real-time Visual Feedback for Patients
Improve exercise adherence through real-time feedback and progress tracking.
Streamlined Clinician Workflows
To reduce the burden of documentation enabling clinicians to focus more on direct patient care.
Iterative Design Process
Iterative Wires
Collaborating with clinicians, engineering, and product to rapidly iterate on various layouts and concepts.
Clinician Wireframes
Patient Wireframes
Defining the Architecture
Working with clinicians to ensure the product's architecture fits their current workflow.
Features Based on User Needs
Tradeoff
To help reduce clinicians' documentation burden, we envisioned a seamless data flow from PT Metrics into the EMR, giving clinicians a centralized location for their notes. We partnered with the top EMR provider in physical therapy, but integration delays didn't align with our launch timeline.
Solution: A Chrome Extension
Rather than wait, I went back to the drawing board and designed a Chrome extension that activates within the clinician's EMR and autofills information from PT Metrics with a single click.
To help clinicians more easily find exercises, we introduced a comprehensive search filter that allows filtering by body part, position, equipment, skill level, and more making it easier to view all relevant options at a glance.
Clear Progress Tracking
Designing with users at the forefront led us to shift toward tablet-based interactions, improving usability across diverse patient demographics and reinforcing the value of user-driven design.
Safety & Compliance
Given the nature of medical devices, it was critical to design a platform that minimizes risk to patients and meets FDA regulatory standards. Safety wasn’t just a requirement, it was a design principle.
Collaboration
The importance of early and continuous collaboration with cross-functional teams and, critically, our end-users, the clinicians and patients.