Valerio Rosponi
All work

Rehabeat

A phone, a TV and wearable sensors that guide amateur athletes through rehabilitation at home, with music setting the pace.

Role
End-to-end UX designer
Team
4 design students
Timeline
Oct 2024 – Jan 2025
Rehabeat on a wall-mounted TV in a living room: a leg flexion workout, rep 4 of 10, with the athlete’s avatar mirrored next to the coach, the knee angle at 83° and the track playing at 104 BPM.

Overview

Problem

Recovering at home, injured athletes can’t tell whether they move correctly, and repeating exercises in silence wears motivation down.

Approach

Clinical literature, physiotherapy protocols and a heuristic review of fitness apps, then a system built across three devices.

Outcome

A phone app, a TV coach and wearable sensors: a plan from the medical report, live form correction, music matched to every exercise.

Role
End-to-end UX designer
Timeline
Oct 2024 – Jan 2025
Team
4 design students
Type
Connected health system
Platform
iOS app + TV + sensors
Tools
Figma, FigJam

Result

The phone turns the medical report into a weekly plan; the TV becomes the coach, mirroring every movement and correcting it live; the music sets the pace of each exercise.

01The coach on the TV

A TV in a dim living room during a leg flexion workout: rep 4 of 10, the athlete’s avatar mirrored next to the coach, the knee at 83° and the track playing at 104 BPM.

02The app

Home: the recovery timeline from injury to check-up, this week’s plan, overall recovery at 42% and today’s session, Knee mobility.
Week 2 report: week 2 done, ahead of plan, with recovery at 44% against a 40% plan, four sessions out of five and an average rhythm of 80 BPM.
Week 2 data: recovery, sessions, minutes and form, then pain down to 3 out of 10 and strength up to 58%, each compared with last week.

03Before and after a session

Before: the sticky bar invites today’s session, Knee mobility, 60 minutes, with a Start button.
Before the session
After: the same bar turns into Session complete, 58 minutes, with the next session tomorrow.
After the session

The system

Synced devices: phone, TV and sensors
3
Check-in questions after every workout
4
Plan recalibration every week, from sensors and ratings
1

Process

  1. 01ChallengeRecovery without a coach
  2. 02ResearchLiterature, protocols, apps
  3. 03InsightsDoubt, boredom, distance
  4. 04DefineOne target, two archetypes
  5. 05IdeateFrom reference to system
  6. 06DesignPhone, TV, sensors, music
  7. 07ReflectionWhat I’d validate next

Challenge

Recovering from a sports injury at home means exercising alone, with nobody to say whether a movement is right.

The brief, for a human–computer interaction course at the University of Trento: help amateur athletes return to their sport after an injury, safely and without making it worse.

A team of four over one semester. I worked on every phase, from research to the app and TV interfaces.

The evidence

65%

of athletes return to their pre-injury level of sport after ACL reconstruction.

Source: Ardern et al., 2014 (69 studies, 7,556 participants)

The same review found that a positive psychological response favours the return: recovery happens in the head as much as in the knee.

Don’t keep up their home exercise programme
30–50%
Musculoskeletal patients (Argent et al., 2018).
Studies link music to better mood and lower perceived exertion
139
Meta-analysis, 3,599 participants (Terry et al., 2020).

The question

How might we give injured amateur athletes the eye of a physiotherapist at home, and a reason to keep going?

Research

We started from how rehabilitation is meant to work, then looked at where unsupervised tools fail.

Methods

  • 01Clinical literatureRecovery after sports injuries, fear of re-injury and why people stop exercising at home.
  • 02Physiotherapy protocolsHow exercises are prescribed, dosed and progressed after an injury.
  • 03Heuristic reviewExisting fitness and rehab apps, checked for safety gaps when nobody supervises.

From the athlete’s side

From there we mapped needs and problems as the athlete lives them: what a safe recovery at home requires, and what gets in the way.

Needs

What a safe recovery at home requires.

  • Exercises for the injured area
  • Correct execution
  • Visible progress
  • Autonomy

Problems

What gets in the way.

  • Little rehab knowledge
  • Low motivation
  • Generic plans
  • Unclear progress

Insights

The exercises were never the problem. Doing them alone, unsure and in silence was.

  1. 01Nobody checks the movement

    Without a therapist in the room, athletes can’t tell a right movement from a wrong one. The doubt feeds a fear of re-injury, and fear makes movements hesitant.

  2. 02Home exercises feel like a sentence

    Prescribed exercises read as a reminder of the injury, not as training. Without progress or reward, repetition turns into a chore, and people stop.

  3. 03Generic plans miss the injury

    Paper sheets and video tutorials are the same for everyone. A plan that ignores the specific injury slows recovery and raises the risk of a relapse.

  4. 04Progress is invisible

    Without clear, regular feedback, athletes don’t know where they stand in their recovery, and the uncertainty leaves them frustrated and lost.

Define

Two archetypes drop out for opposite reasons: one is afraid of moving wrong, the other is bored of moving at all.

The target

Amateur athletes aged 18 to 50, recovering at home from a sports injury. Motivated to get back to their sport, busy with everything else, and keen on fewer visits and trips to a clinic.

The archetypes

Both are synthesised from the research above: two ends of the same problem, not two invented users.

Wants

In their words

Friction

Needs

Opportunity

01 — Kinesiophobia

The anxious perfectionist

WantsCertainty

In their words“I want to recover, but I am terrified of making a wrong move and hurting myself again.”
FrictionInsecure in every movement, with a constant need for reassurance.
NeedsTo know, while moving, that the movement is right.
OpportunityReal-time visual feedback and posture correction from the sensors.
02 — Boredom

The bored achiever

WantsChallenge

In their words“I know what I have to do, but repeating the same exercises in silence is demotivating.”
FrictionNo stimulus left: therapy has become a tedious chore.
NeedsThe joy of movement and a sense of athletic challenge.
OpportunityMusic and game mechanics, with the rhythm driving the flow.

Design principles

  1. 01Clinical precision, home comfort

    The rigour of a supervised session, with the ease of a consumer product.

  2. 02Rhythm as a driver

    Music is not background: its tempo sets the speed of each movement, so instructions become instinct.

  3. 03A mirror that corrects

    Athletes have to see themselves to correct themselves, with instructions laid over their own movement.

Ideate

Euleria showed what sensors and game mechanics can do for rehabilitation. Its limit was who it is for: professionals, not patients.

What we kept and what we changed

  1. 01Kept: sensors

    Precise movement data is what makes feedback worth trusting.

  2. 02Kept: game mechanics

    Points and visible progress keep people going through repetition.

  3. 03Changed: who sets the plan

    Euleria needs a professional to define it. Rehabeat starts from the doctor’s report and builds the plan itself.

  4. 04Changed: who reads the data

    Clinical dashboards are hard to read without training. Progress has to make sense to the athlete.

Design

Three devices, one session: the phone plans, the TV coaches, the sensors watch, and the music keeps time.

The system

Four parts and what flows between them. The phone is the hub; the music travels with the session, from the plan on the phone to the TV.

The Rehabeat system: the athlete wears the sensors; sensors and phone talk over Wi-Fi; phone and TV sync over Wi-Fi; the TV gives video and audio feedback; the phone shows progress; the athlete interacts with the phone. WearsWi-FiWi-FiVideo, audiofeedbackProgressInteraction01AthleteMoves, rates each session02SensorsMotion bands, floor mat03Phone appPlan, camera, progress04TV appCoach, avatar, music
Hover a part to follow its links.

The session, step by step

Five moments, from the doctor’s report to the end of the week.

  1. App: upload report and plan9:14
    01

    From report to plan

    Body data sets the safe limits; the athlete uploads the medical report, and the AI turns injury, area and recommendations into a weekly plan.

  2. TV: framing check16:9
    02

    Set up once

    TV paired with a QR code, sensors over Bluetooth, connections remembered. The phone goes under the TV and both screens confirm the framing.

  3. App: track for the exercise9:14
    03

    Music sets the pace

    Each exercise gets a track whose beat matches the movement. A best fit is ready; the athlete can swap it for another song in the same tempo range.

  4. TV workout: the athlete’s avatar mirrored next to the coach, the knee angle at 83°, rep 4 of 10 and the track at 104 BPM.
    04

    A coach on the TV

    A live avatar mirrors every movement next to a guide figure. When form drifts, the correction appears on the avatar as it happens.

  5. App: weekly report9:14
    05

    The week, measured

    After each workout, four quick ratings: pain, fatigue, difficulty, mood. With the sensor data they feed a weekly report, and the plan adapts.

What it is designed to change

  1. 01Safer autonomy

    Form errors caught in real time, so a session at home keeps the safety of a supervised one.

  2. 02Training, not treatment

    Rhythm and game mechanics turn a medical obligation into a workout people want to finish.

  3. 03Measurable recovery

    Range of motion and stability scores, set against how the athlete feels, replace guesswork with evidence.

  4. 04Lighter clinics

    With execution checked remotely, physiotherapists could focus on the cases that need them in person.

Reflection

The brief looked technical. The real problem was emotional: fear on one side, boredom on the other.

What I learned

Sensors and AI were the easy part to imagine. What decided the design was confidence: a system that shows the athlete a movement is right, instead of just asking for it.

The music idea taught me to treat an emotional need as a functional one. Rhythm is not decoration here: it is the instruction.

If I started again

  1. Put the prototype in front of injured athletes before refining the screens.
  2. Bring in a physiotherapist from the first week, to check the exercises, the safety limits and what the AI may change.
  3. Test the music idea on its own, with a quick experiment on whether matching the beat really improves form and adherence.

Rehabeat is still a concept, designed in Figma. Its next step is a session with a real athlete and a real physiotherapist.

What I take with me

People keep going when they can see they’re doing it right.