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Expertise
The up and up
UpSwing Health’s goal: to help injured athletes find the best path to recovery at the lowest cost. When its founders, two orthopedic surgeons, approached us in 2018, they wanted a complete overhaul of their digital platform, including a fresh new look and a guided “symptom checker” that would integrate with a live chat feature. We conducted extensive research and drafted a game plan.
Picture of health
At the top of UpSwing Health’s homepage, users see eight pulsating dots over a translucent human figure—one dot on its neck, another on its back, etc. Behind it, a full-page carousel of images shows athletes playing tennis, basketball, and all kinds of other sporty things. We initially presented UpSwing with two styles for their site—one clinical and clean, one sporty and fun—and let them choose the best fit their business goals. They opted for the sporty route.
Dynamic display
As with all our projects, we placed responsive design at a premium. UpSwing’s website displays flawlessly on all devices, from iPhone 5 up to widescreen TV. All browsers, all screens, and all athletes are welcome.
Brand identity exercise
A logo is the face of a company, and the process of selecting one is pivotal. We presented UpSwing with various options, each with its own personality and possibilities for the brand.
On the run
Four simple geometric shapes form the silhouette of this runner, whose posture suggests forward motion. But there’s more here than meets the eye. Tilt your head to the right and focus on the black background to see the word “up.” We call such hidden-in-plain-view, nifty-if-you-notice-them details our “winks”—signature touches that set our work apart.
On the ball
It could be a tennis ball, a bowling ball… This logo, composed of two shapes, has a youthful energy, not to mention another “wink.” Between the orange and blue of the ball is the inverted silhouette of a U.
On the fly
UpSwing’s U crops up again in this logo, whose parallel and perpendicular lines suggest a sense of coming together. The shapes themselves represent a fitting symbol: wings.
Touch and go
The showpiece of UpSwingHealth.com is its Symptom Checker, which asks a series of multiple-choice questions and then provides a customized report of the conditions users might have. We could’ve used straightforward development to make a functional Symptom Checker. We chose to work harder and make a better one.
UpSwing’s website was fully customized in WordPress, our content management system of choice, which we integrated with React. Using the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, we created a custom data schema, which we then used to expose a set of bootstrapped data into a React app. For the non-tech-minded among us, that means speed: Answer a question, and the next one appears instantaneously. The data, so to speak, is already there.
Pick your path
Early on in drafting a user flow for the site, our clients considered asking users up front which sport caused their injury. Our surveys, however, revealed that when injured athletes seek medical attention, they expect to be asked a different question first: Where does it hurt? So we created a user flow that makes identifying the area of injury the most prominent first step—whether the user selects an area of the body on the homepage or responds to the Body Part prompt in the sidebar. For those who want to go about things differently, we included an option to research injuries by sport as well.
Contact sport
UpSwing’s website allows users to get expert advice from orthopedists, surgeons, and physical therapists—through the site’s live chat function or on its active community forum. Visitors who use the Symptom Checker receive a list of the questions they answered and the responses they entered. Using the report’s hard-coded URL, they can then share their results with one of the site’s professionals and delve deeper into the nature of their injury.
Teamwork
We integrated with a number of plugins to optimize the website and add advanced functionalities. The site’s interactive chat function uses Intercom, a customer messaging platform that we integrated with a landing page to gain insights into users early on. To customize the front-end interface of the site’s forum feature, we integrated bbPress, a WordPress plugin, and augmented it with Yet Another Stars Rating, which allows users to rank each other’s responses.
Playing to win
The charms of UpSwing’s website extend beyond its looks. It’s an intuitive, super-responsive resource that empowers athletes to participate in their own recovery. Want to know more about that pain in your shoulder? Visit UpSwingHealth.com. Want to enjoy the work of a team of passionate professionals? You know the URL.
Credits
Producer
Gary Gertz
Steve Singerman
Developers
Oka Tai-Lee
Sarah Quigley
Designer
Masahiro Naruse
Karen Chow