Conclusions & Future Development
There were a lot of very big egos involved in this project, both internally and with our clinical system partners.
This presented a myriad of communication challenges and very tense moments.
Overcoming the status quo is never easy. We had to convince major stakeholders that what we had to offer was going to be a benefit to them, and not a threat. Navigating the politics of a highly competitive market was an experience that taught me a lot.
This was the first project of its kind for me, and I learned so much about conflict resolution on a cross functional, international team, navigating cultural minorities and sensitive clinical populations, all on top of conducting technology testing for the first time in my life.
On a personal level, This project required years of effort before it resulted in any benefit at all, so it taught me patience on a level I had never experienced before.
Challenges Encountered
Takeaways and Expansions
When all was said and done, Zukor’s Grind was launched in 2012 to the excitement of many neurofeedback providers and the delight of many patients all over the world. It has been followed up by Zukor’s Air, Zukor’s Carnival, and several other products that continue to set the standard for feedback options in the field, even now. I thank Zukor Interactive every day for being willing to take on the mammoth task of changing the field from the software up, and I thank them for allowing me to contribute throughout the journey in what I now know was UX Research and UI testing. It has shaped who I am as a designer and ultimately led to my choice to pursue UX/UI design.
Future Development
The Problem
Feedback software for clinical and research use in the neurofeedback and biofeedback fields was either overly simple or overly stimulating, causing clinical patients to either quickly become bored or experience reduced treatment effects due to overstimulation. None of the existing feedback software options allowed the clinician to tailor the feedback and stimulation to the client's individual needs.
The Solution
These 2 programs gave the clinician the ability to shape the feedback environment to a level of individuality that was unprecedented.
The Impact
-Works with 5 world-class, clinical biofeedback systems
-Redefined industry standard for feedback options internationally and domestically
-1 clinic reported a 37% increase in client retention
Project Context
Bringing expertise and lived experience to the table
Because I had been in the field for 2 years at the time this project began, and I had been talking with clinical users, both clients and clinicians, for about 18 months regarding their experiences and frustrations with current feedback options, I spent about 6 months after the project began gathering and communicating user needs and technological requirements to the cross functional design and development team.
Because my work was under an NDA and all files were turned over to the company upon completion, I can not show my original work. However, a storyboard demonstrating the user problem might have looked similar to this:
The therapist would have to spend valuable clinical time justifying the disconnect, and clients would sometimes quit therapy before their goals had been reached, or just resist the process and waste precious time. Their boredom and frustration with the dated graphics and lack of intuitive connection to their progress was negatively impacting the clients’ therapeutic progress and our business KPIs.
On top of these issues, there are several neurofeedback systems used in the field, but because the client interfaces varied so greatly from one system to the next, clients had difficulty adjusting if therapy had to transfer to a different provider or system in house. This was a roadblock for not only my husband, but for many others that I spoke with at conferences and continuing education events.
After several years of encountering these issues, we got tired of accepting that this was, “the way it has been done for 20 years.”
Planning
In order to align our software with the needs of the clinicians and clients, we looked at all commonly available feedback software for the 4 major systems in the field. What we found was that the most useful tools were those that offered both discrete (go/no go) feedback and proportional feedback (% success) at the same time.
We also found some major pain points in the existing options:
In order to be accessible to the user, both auditory and visual cues needed to be customizable, and we needed little or no textual cues for users due to the young age of some users, and the language diversity inherent in a global product.
We user tested many short tones, or “beeps” and came to the decision to give the therapist the option to personalize and customize the settings. The tones could be both discrete (either they happened every 500ms or they didn’t) and proportional (volume based).
In order to align our software with the needs of the clinicians and clients, we looked at all commonly available feedback software for the 4 major systems in the field. What we found was that the most useful tools were those that offered both discrete (go/no go) feedback and proportional feedback (% success) at the same time.
We also found some major pain points in the existing options:
In order to be accessible to the user, both auditory and visual cues needed to be customizable, and we needed little or no textual cues for users due to the young age of some users, and the language diversity inherent in a global product.
We user tested many short tones, or “beeps” and came to the decision to give the therapist the option to personalize and customize the settings. The tones could be both discrete (either they happened every 500ms or they didn’t) and proportional (volume based).
We included both high and low tones for each digital instrument in order to assist with inclusion and accessibility for individuals with partial hearing loss and neurodiverse sensory processing and cognitive issues.
Execution
Thematically, we went through several brainstorming sessions and decided on a skateboarding theme. This decision was based on several factors, including the popularity of skateboarding games in the entertainment industry at the time and the naturally proportional nature of the real world actions (ie speed) along with the opportunity to introduce discrete feedback in the form of “tricks.” We also recognized that the background sounds of the skateboard wheels could be included in the proportional feedback. Both of these encouraged a natural mapping of the digital product to the real world. Out of the same brainstorming sessions, we defined out 2 other themes that could be developed into later products. These became Zukor Air (a flying game) and Zukor Carnival (a boardwalk midway styled game directed at very short attention spans and peak performance).
Modernization of the graphical interface as well as the customization features of the UI were crucial in making the product fit the largest range of clinical populations. I was not involved in the visual design or prototyping process directly, but I consulted in the ideation and conducted testing of the designs. Several elements of game design aesthetics were identified, including avatar customization, scoring, leaderboards, checkpoints, and 3D graphics. A set of characters with unique skateboards were created for users to choose between.
