Savannah, GA

Emma Wu
AI PRODUCT · HACKATHON 2025

A recovery companion for ACL rehab.

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An AI recovery companion that keeps athletes motivated through ACL rehab, with a friendly character to talk to and clear insight into how their knee is healing.

Event
Hack iX 2025 · SCAD’s first hackathon
Team
Busy Bee: Nicole Telesz, Joshua Moore, Yuchen Zhang, Riley Chen, Yi He, Yiming Han, Minwei Wu
Built with
Figma Make (React) · OpenAI API · PubMed API · Supabase
Category
AI product · UX/UI design
RECO open on a phone: BoKnee asks how your knee feels today Chatting with BoKnee about a tough rehab day What’s in your knee: a research-based recovery insight Interactive knee anatomy diagram

My role

Experience designer on a seven-person hackathon team: shaping the problem, the motivation model and the app experience, then prototyping it with AI tools in a weekend.

  • Research & framing
  • Experience & UI design
  • Prompt & persona design
  • AI prototyping (Figma Make)
  • Pitch story

01 The problem

One day, you’re on the field.The next, you’re in surgery.Recovery feels endless.Is it even working?

Scene 01 / 04Scene 02 / 04Scene 03 / 04Scene 04 / 04

Imagine you’re a 20-year-old college soccer player, training every day for the next game.

One bad landing, a torn ACL, and suddenly the season is over.

Every day you repeat the same small exercises at home, for months, on your own.

And you can’t tell whether your knee is actually healing, or if any of it is working.

01

The hardest part isn’t physical

Rehab breaks down in the mind first.

41.8%

of athletes experience anxiety and depression after ACL surgery. Teen and college athletes struggle to stay motivated through repetitive, months-long home programmes, and motivation, not ability, is what fails.

Daily stressHome exercise adherence
Daily stress and low mood both go hand in hand with skipping home exercises.
02

The insight

Restore motivation, not just routines.

We built on Self-Determination Theory: people stay motivated when three needs are met. Each became a part of RECO.

  1. Autonomy

    You lead the conversation

    A daily check-in where you say how you feel in your own words, or with one tap.

  2. Competence

    See that it’s working

    Research-based insights and an anatomy view that show what’s happening inside your knee at this stage.

  3. Relatedness

    You’re not doing this alone

    BoKnee, a warm companion who listens, validates and cheers you on, without giving medical advice.

03

Try RECO

Try it here · simulatedChat, pick a mood, or tap the knee.

Say hi to BoKnee.

Left is a simulation using BoKnee’s replies from a real session; right is the real build on live APIs.

Try “hi”, then “my knee felt sore today”.

Runs Llama 3.2 on your device · 0.9 GB, once.

Walkthrough · live APIsThe real build, connected to OpenAI and PubMed.
04

Key features

A friend, and a window into your knee.

BoKnee chat on a phone
AI chatbot

Talk it out with BoKnee

BoKnee opens every day by asking how you feel, what happened and what helped. It reflects your mood back, validates it, and keeps you going, always as a supportive friend, never as a doctor.

  • Persona, goals and boundaries set in the system prompt
  • Tuned to where you are in recovery (day 41)
  • No medical or physical therapy instructions
Know your knee

See what’s healing inside

Tap the knee to see an anatomy view of the graft and what’s happening at your stage, plus a short fact drawn from peer-reviewed research and rewritten in plain, encouraging language.

  • PubMed abstracts summarised by GPT-4o-mini
  • Filtered to your recovery stage
  • Turns “am I getting better?” into something you can see
05

How it works

Two AI pipelines, one friendly face.

RECO app

01AI chatbot

  1. OpenAI APIthe secret key stays in Supabase, never in the app
  2. Starting promptBoKnee’s persona, goals and boundaries
  3. Open chat with the agentGPT-4o-mini carries the conversation
  4. Chat-style UIreplies appear in BoKnee’s bubble

02Recovery facts

  1. Entrez PubMed APIfinds peer-reviewed ACL rehab studies
  2. OpenAI APIturns an abstract into a short, stage-specific fact
  3. Information UIshown in “What’s in your knee”
Live sitebuilt and hosted with Figma Make
06

What’s next

Where RECO could go.

VITA, a second character for nutrition and rehab knowledge

VITA, a second companion

An AI knowledge assistant for the side of rehab BoKnee doesn’t cover, such as nutrition.

Home-screen widgets showing the recovery day counter

Widgets

A day counter and check-in on the home screen, for a stronger sense of companionship.

A phone strapped to a leg brace measuring knee angle

Phone sensors for rehab

Use the phone’s motion sensors to measure leg-lift angle, speed and shake, for more accurate progress.

Next project

Zen Bloom

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