Introducing Glovley
It’s like having your favorite massage therapist meet your most comfortable pair of gloves — we call it Glovley.
Contributors: Roger Hackett, Marianne Albay, Sonya Lao, Jayden Sadettan
Problem Statement:
Arthritis/Carpal Tunnel makes playing Guitar uncomfortable. Glovely’s therapies put the P back into Play and replace Pain with Gain. Arthritis and carpal tunnel are not show stoppers. Heat, Vibration, and Compression treat arthritis and carpal tunnel in Physical Therapy and Hand Clinics across the USA. Guitar players rather make music than make extra Physical Therapy appointments and spend their money on Musical Instruments , and Accessories , rather than spend their time traveling to and from Treatment. Now they can.
Glovley uses innovative technology to deliver proven therapies to reduce pain while playing the guitar and uses machine learning to inform the player when hand positions will aggravate pain. When the user presses the power button near the thumb of the glove, the glove turns on and prompts the user to begin ‘Therapy Mode ’ or ‘Playing Mode’ .
Custom ‘Therapy Mode’, is as easy as pressing a button.
Press Therapy Mode on the screen to set the mode, then Press Hi/Med/Low on the screen to set the level.
Press Heat/Vibration/Compression on the screen to set the Mode.
After 10 minutes, the glove automatically begins ‘Playing Mode’, and the ‘Playing Mode’ screen appears. The glove detects positions that are not ergonomic . Haptic feedback gains the Guitar player’s attention with a distinctive vibration that reminds the Guitar player to adjust their form. In ‘Playing Mode’, press quick-release on the glove and the fingers of the glove will pop off to increase the feeling and expression as the Guitar player sounds the chords, solos, and melodies. Play freely!
When the Guitar player reaches the end of their recommended practice session, Glovley gently suggests that it is time to stop.
A simple press of the power button and that practice session is done.
Paper Prototyping:
Three participants tested paper prototypes of Glovley.
Two Participants had arthritis in their hands, and one participant had Carpal Tunnel. We used a mix of directed storytelling, talk aloud, and interviewing as part of a broader Contextual Inquiry design method. We learned what Guitar Players think of making music, and how important it is to play Guitar. We discovered that many people could not raise their middle fingers independently of their ring finger with their palm facing down, and therefore our gesture-based design had to be redesigned. In addition, we learned that guitar players highly prefer having direct contact with their fingers to the strings on the guitar, so our glove material and structure also had to be redesigned.
These design methods were exceptionally good at showing us what problems there were to solve. It became clear that helping Guitar player’s hands feel their best, and guiding them away from bad playing form would be our goals.
Digital Mockup
We developed a digital prototype based on our Paper Prototypes
to simulate the two main tasks of Glovley , therapy mode and practice mode. Our main task in therapy mode was to ensure the user received treatment in an accessible manner that increased blood circulation in the hand. We focused on creating an interface delivering heat, vibration, and compression therapies in a simple user interface. This is reflected in the grid of buttons we display. In our second task, we wanted the user to be aware of guitar positions that were painful for the hand, so we kept the screen simple only flashing the STOP screen if the hand entered an uncomfortable position. We used a software prototyping tool called Figma. Figma provides scaffolding that allows us to add interactions for each of the User interface elements such as software and power buttons.
In designing the digital prototype, three inconsistencies emerged.
- The red power-on light had to go. It is impossible to have a light with no power.
- The UI buttons in Therapy mode required more separation to allow Users to correctly recognize that the Therapies were organized in columns.
- The glove call flow wasn’t well polished. We decided to fix that with better interactions. First, if the user immediately wanted a high setting in therapy mode, we changed the interaction to allow them to directly select the level of treatment, rather than pressing the low, medium and high buttons. Also, we provided a Quick Start Guide that shows the basic functions that Glovley can perform, and what the steps are to achieve User goals.
We also included a way for the user to directly access playing mode instead of going through therapy mode. This allowed the user to just use the error detection software while playing. Overall we changed the coloring in the therapy mode into a gradient descent. This shows the upward progress on what setting they are on. Limitations aside, we gained powerful insights on the core design and user experience , such as the look, feel, and intuitiveness of Glovley .
Summary
In the end, we wanted to solve a problem that not many people may think of. Arthritis affects 1 out of 10 people in the United States and the effect on their daily life is varied. We wanted to tackle the problem for musicians as we did not want this disease to stop them from the thing that they love. We found the need that every musician that suffered from arthritis wanted nothing to change. They wanted to play the guitar normally and didn’t want anything to come in the way of that. This is why we came up with a therapeutic glove that can address the problem before playing and an alert system that addresses the problem after playing. We envision multiple users will use it to amplify treatment for pain relief.
