The Injured Athlete App
For my senior design project and thesis, I devoted 4 months of research to understanding why college athletes experience deteriorated mental health throughout their athletic career. Through extensive research and my own experience of being a college athlete, I've identified one of the main causes of deteriorated mental health to be due to injury.
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When an athlete endures an injury, they are not only affected physically, but their mental health is impacted by the injury as well. My research focuses on the neglect and lack thereof for athletes who are battling with mental health. Athletes, especially at the higher levels, have a substantial support network for their physical health, but mental health support is sIll lacking. It is crucial for athletes to be in peak physical health in order to compete at the highest level. So, they are supplied with athleIc trainers, nutriIonists, doctors, physical therapists, and more in order to succeed physically. Sadly this system sIll neglects to support an important part of that athletes health: mental health. There are close to none of the same amount of resources to support an athlete's mental well being. Without a proper support system to ensure an athlete is mentally healthy, they might not be able to perform to the best of their ability.
To accompany the problem I identified, I designed a mobile app that aims to help student athletes, primarily collegiate athletes, who struggle with their mental health during an injury. I wanted to create a single space where individuals could educate themselves on their injury, document their process in a journal, and communicate with other student athletes who are going through similar challenges. The following are screenshots of the development and iterations of the app based on user testing and feedback.
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Link to prototyped app
The following screens will walk you through my design process and the iterations I made after testing each prototype. I started my process by drawing a user flow diagram and hand drawn wireframe mockups. This allowed me to get my initial thoughts down on paper without thinking of constraints or parameters. My next step was to build the first prototype and wireframes in Figma to visualize my ideas and perform some basic user testing. After receiving feedback from my design studio peers, I began to update my designs to build prototype 2. I updated all the original pages and created a more welcoming feel to the app. The third prototype includes updated designs and a news page that was recommended through user testing. Prototype 3 is fully prototyped in Figma and was used to test a realistic user flow. The link to view the prototyped app is below.
Link to prototyped app
