Our Users and Clients
When it came to reviewing who our users were, the easiest people to consider first and foremost were our two clients: Dr. Bennett Goldberg and Dr. Melody Tran. Our target audience is large but simple: anyone who uses therapy bands. Despite having two different occupations, both our clients here uses therapy bands, and thus fit into our target audience.
Figure 2.1: A therapy band that has been tied by Dr. Melody Tran is being used for an exercise called “wall walks.”
More specifically, while our clients are both different kinds of users of therapy bands, they both use the therapy bands in similar, if not the exact same ways. So in the end, both of them will have the same complaints with the therapy bands and they do: that tying the therapy bands into knots are unreliable and troublesome. According to our clients, the knot itself often either becomes stuck and will not untie or is too loose and comes untied too easily. There is also the inconvenience of having to untie and retie the knot if adjustments are needed. Thus, our main requirement (final goal, really) is to create a device that will help ease this process.
The reason we are specifically considering both Dr. Bennett Goldberg and Dr. Melody Tran in our design requirements is because their usage of the band perfectly models the two main categories of users that use therapy bands: patients and physical therapists. Dr. Bennett Goldberg, a professor at Northwestern University, is simply using the therapy bands as a patient. He receives them from a physical therapist and is assigned exercises to do with them for whatever reason he is in physical therapy. He does exercises with a band at a physical therapy facility along with also doing exercises with a band at home. Dr. Melody Tran, on the other hand, is the physical therapist doing the assigning of the therapy bands. She assigns exercises to do with a therapy band, whether it is in the actual facility or at the patient’s own home. Either way, both of them will have to tie therapy bands. According to Dr. Melody Tran, when the patients are at the facility, the physical therapists do all the knot tying for the patients, such as the therapy band that is being used in Figure 3.1. However, when the patients are at home, they are on their own if they need to tie and untie a therapy band for exercises.
The Requirements
All our requirements were set based on information that we received from our interviews with Dr. Bennett Goldberg and Dr. Melody Tran as well as from our background research. These requirements are:
1. Quickly and Easily Adjustable
During our interview with Dr. Melody Tran, she revealed that in her line of work, quite literally every second matters. So when issues arise from the knots in the bands, there can end up being a lot of time wasted and collateral damage. She also explicitly stated that she would not utilize our device, no matter how useful and fast it was, if it was not simple. These sentiments were echoed during our interview with Dr. Bennett Goldberg as well.
2. Cheap and Affordable
Dr. Melody Tran explicitly stated that she would not use the device if it was not relatively cheap compared to the $50 that is spent on 25 yards of therapy band. Additionally, one of the main advantages to users of using therapy bands as opposed to other exercise equipment is that therapy bands are useful and durable at a very inexpensive price compared to many other apparati [4].
3. Comfortable and Compact
Dr. Melody Tran emphasized the need of comfort. She stated that when it comes to physical therapy, comfort is the single most important thing. So no matter how affordable and time-saving our device might be, if it was not any more uncomfortable than a therapy band could be, then our device would not be used. During our interview with Dr. Bennett Goldberg, he emphasized that the design created must not be bulky as it cannot hurt a user if it is against their muscle during therapy. Additionally, a patent for a therapy band device also highlighted the essentiality of a non-bulky, compact design that wouldn’t infringe upon the user’s motion [10]. Therefore, our device must be comfortable and compact.