Design for Health | Stroke Rehabilitation

Product: Innovative Healthcare

Skills:  Research | UX Design

Context

Alongside the team at Big Motive, I led the research for a health-tech initiative by Bioliberty, focused on enhancing a robotic rehabilitation product called Lifehub, designed to support hand therapy for stroke survivors. Faced with widespread upper-limb weakness post-stroke and an anticipated shortage of occupational therapists by 2030, the team needed user-centred data insights to guide impactful innovation.

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‍Approach 

At the beginning of the project, I spoke directly with stroke survivors and clinicians to understand their day-to-day challenges and frustrations with existing rehabilitation options. These conversations were emotional and humbling - many patients described feeling isolated or frustrated in their recovery, while clinicians emphasised the pressures of balancing patient care with limited time and resources. My role was to capture these experiences and translate them into clear insights for the client, ensuring that the human needs remained central throughout the design sprint.

We then ran a design sprint to rapidly develop and test a data-visualisation prototype that supported both clinicians and patients. This aimed to help patients view their progress in a motivating way, while also giving clinicians a clearer view of rehabilitation outcomes.

Through tightly facilitated sessions, we identified key user needs, ensuring the solution engaged patients in their recovery, streamlined clinician workflows, and aligned with real-world rehabilitation routines. Usability testing and feedback loops with participants helped us refine and validate the prototype against real needs.

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‍Outcome & Impact

The design sprint accelerated solution development, resulting in a validated prototype aligned with patient and clinician priorities.

The initial discovery research provided the client with a validated direction for their product and a deeper understanding of what mattered most to patients and clinicians.

The final prototype positioned the tool to deliver meaningful, data-driven insights that empower stroke survivors to feel more engaged in their recovery and give clinicians confidence in tracking outcomes.

For me, this project reinforced the importance of empathy in research: taking the time to listen to people’s lived experiences and making sure their voices shape the technology designed to support them.

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