The fitness app market is enormous. And almost none of it is designed for people with Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, bone cancer, or spinal fractures. Standard exercise routines don't just fail these users — they hurt them. Literally. Pain, dehydration, and exhaustion from routines built for able-bodied people are among the most common reasons people with motor limitations stop trying to stay active at all.

Stamina is the app that should have existed already. A personalized fitness coaching platform where certified physical therapists design and monitor exercise plans tailored to each user's specific condition, capacity, and goals — delivered through an interface built from the ground up for accessibility, dignity, and real-world use.

I led the end-to-end design: from research with users who have progressive conditions to a high-fidelity prototype and responsive website that meets WCAG standards without feeling clinical.

Goal

Design an accessible, genuinely usable fitness coaching app that provides people with limited motor function personalized exercise plans — improving wellness outcomes for a population the market has overlooked.

Target Audience

Adults with motor limitations and chronic conditions, including Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, and spinal injuries. Also: the physical therapists who care for them.

My Role

Lead UX Designer, concept to delivery. User research, information architecture, wireframing, prototyping, usability studies, WCAG accessibility implementation, responsive design across app and web.

The Problem

Three barriers kept people with motor limitations from accessing fitness support — and each one was a design failure, not a user failure:

• Exercise programs built for the wrong body. Standard routines assume a baseline of mobility that many of these users don't have. The result isn't just ineffective — it causes pain, dehydration, and injury. Users weren't quitting because they lacked motivation, but because the tools available were actively working against them.

• Progress monitoring that fell apart in practice. Therapists are busy and patients are managing fluctuating conditions. Without a system that made tracking progress easy and asynchronous, adherence collapsed — not because users didn't care, but because the feedback loop was broken.

• Cost as a barrier to care. Rehabilitation centers are expensive and many fitness apps designed for accessibility still price out the exact population they claim to serve. For people who already face significant healthcare costs, an inaccessible price point is a closed door.

Research

User interviews with people living with motor limitations produced findings that reframed the entire design brief. The frustration wasn't just about features — it was about being ignored. For years, users had tried to adapt mainstream fitness tools to their needs, and failed repeatedly. What they wanted wasn't a modified version of a standard app. They wanted something designed for them from the start.

Personas

Louise

• Age: 59
• Education: High School (incomplete)
• Hometown: Elkins, AR
• Occupation: Homemaker (pensioned)
  

With multiple spinal fractures, Louise needs exercises that account for her specific injury pattern — not a generic "low-impact" routine that still causes pain. She needs customization, not accommodation.

Carla

• Age: 37
• Education: MBA
• Hometown: Port Arthur, TX
• Occupation: Program Manager at UT
  

Carla has multiple sclerosis with heat sensitivity and fatigue. Standard routines lead to dehydration and exhaustion within minutes. Carla needs a plan that works with her condition's daily variability, not despite it.

Kwame

• Age: 44
• Education: Bachelor of Physiotherapy
• Hometown: Des Moines, IA
• Occupation: Physical Therapist
  

Kwame manages patients with complex motor limitations and currently builds and tracks every plan manually. He needs a system that handles the administrative load so he can focus on clinical judgment — not paperwork.

Starting the design

Accessibility was a design constraint from day one — not a layer applied at the end. Low-fidelity wireframes were built with WCAG 2.1 AA requirements embedded: touch target sizing, contrast ratios, and simplified navigation hierarchies designed for users with reduced fine motor control.

Ideation, Sketching & Wireframing

Explore the initial
Stamina low-fidelity prototype

Usability Study

An unmoderated remote usability study with 5 participants (20–60 minutes each) produced three critical findings that shaped the next round of design:

• Flexible scheduling was non-negotiable. Users' physical capacity fluctuates day to day — sometimes hour to hour. A rigid schedule that couldn't accommodate a bad day wasn't a fitness plan; it was a source of guilt. The design needed to treat rescheduling as a first-class feature, not an edge case.

• Progress needed to survive interruption. Users couldn't always complete an exercise video in one sitting. The expectation that they'd remember where they left off was unrealistic. Seamless progress retention needed to be built into the core video experience.

• Navigation was losing people. Several participants couldn't find key sections without assistance. For a population where cognitive load and motor challenges compound each other, unclear navigation wasn't just a usability problem — it was a barrier to the app's entire purpose.

Refining the design

Three targeted iterations addressed the study findings directly:

'My Missed Exercises' section: Added as a dedicated home screen feature — allowing users to resume incomplete routines without searching or remembering. For users with fluctuating conditions, this was the difference between an app that works with their life and one that doesn't.

Medical history in account creation: The onboarding form was revised to capture the information physical therapists actually need to build a safe, effective first plan. Asking for this upfront saved multiple back-and-forth exchanges and meant the first exercise plan could be genuinely personalized, not generic.

Full-screen video playback + Summary screen: The exercise video interface was stripped back to maximize screen real estate — critical for users with visual challenges or those exercising away from a fixed position. Progress reporting moved to a dedicated Summary screen, giving users a clear, calm moment to communicate completion to their coach.

Key Mockups

The core workout experience — Exercise Video → Workout Summary → Routine Complete confirmation — is designed as a clear, positive loop: do the work, see the progress, feel the recognition.

High-fidelity prototype

Explore the interactive high-fidelity prototype to experience the refined user flows and accessibility-focused design for Stamina

 Stamina Hi-Fi prototype.

Style Guides

Responsive design

Following the app, a responsive website was designed to extend Stamina's reach — for users who prefer to exercise from a larger screen, for therapists managing patients on desktop, and for caregivers researching on behalf of loved ones.

Website Information Architecture

Optimized Responsive Design

Going forward

Business Impact

The response from potential users said more than any metric could. One user living with a progressive motor condition shared: "I'm beyond happy and satisfied that an app has finally listened to us… Now I have a plan according to my needs that hits the nail on the head. Thank you so much!"

"Finally listened to us." That's the design outcome that matters — not engagement rates or session lengths, but the experience of being seen and served by a product for the first time.

Next Steps

1) Conduct quantitative outcome research to measure Stamina's actual impact on user wellness — adherence rates, pain levels, activity frequency.

2) Design an accessible pricing model that doesn't recreate the financial barrier it was built to remove — including potential subsidies, partnership models, or a freemium tier.

3) Explore advanced accessibility features: microphone control, motion sensor integration, and eye-tracking support for users with severe motor and speech impairments.

4) Build a coach recruitment and content pipeline — partnering with certified physical therapists to expand the exercise library across conditions and severity levels.

LinkedIn  |  edith@edithmoreno.com

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