Curtin University Humanizing Occupational Therapy with SpaceDraft

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You know that feeling when a student takes the tool you built and completely runs with it, finding genuinely innovative ways to help their whole department?

That’s exactly what happened when Ruby Beales, a Master’s Occupational Therapy student at Curtin University, recently presented her work with SpaceDraft to the Curtin School of Allied Health.

Ruby didn’t just demo software; she showcased a blueprint for making health education more empathetic, accessible, and aligned with the real-world complexities of patient care. And the faculty's enthusiastic response? It shows that this kind of forward-thinking, human-centered visual technology is exactly what the future of health sciences demands.

From Student Project to Curricular Power-Up

Ruby started using SpaceDraft to visualize the complex occupational therapy process known as the Canadian Practice Process Framework (CPPF). Instead of a dense procedure or static diagram, she transformed the framework into an interactive, animated storyboard.

Open the CPPF SpaceDraft

This allowed her and her peers to click through each stage with supporting information, checklists, and media embedded right into the process, without being locked into a rigid linear flow.

But for Ruby the real magic was SpaceDraft’s simplicity:

“I can’t use Canva and I can barely use Word but I can use SpaceDraft!”

Modern expectations - especially among younger generations - have moved decisively from long text documents to more engaging, accessible, and effective visual tools.

This intuitive design is no accident. SpaceDraft is built to lower barriers for sophisticated visual storytelling by turning abstract concepts into clearly chunked and scaffolded knowledge, accessible on any device, in the way people naturally engage with information.

For students and practitioners, this means less time wrestling with complicated software, less time writing and struggling to digest dense documents, and more time connecting with the material and their clients.

Humanizing Gordon

Ruby’s most compelling work was mapping out a 12-week geriatric case study about a client named Gordon (not his real name). Historically, this case study material was scattered across discussion boards, workshop documents, labs, and lectures.

Ruby used SpaceDraft to present all of Gordon’s information in one interactive space. She included his full background, medical history, social situation, OT assessments, intervention plan, and evaluation.

The goal? To move students beyond recording facts to truly understand and connect with a person. Using SpaceDraft’s voice-over capabilities and interactive visuals she helped bring Gordon to life, fostering the empathy and human connection core to great Occupational Therapy practice.

See Gordon's full case study in SpaceDraft

Value Across Allied Health

Ruby’s presentation wasn't limited to her own subject. She quickly showed the assembled educators how this visual-first approach could unlock new possibilities for teaching and clinical fieldwork across the entire Curtin School of Allied Health, which includes Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy, Speech Pathology, Social Work, and Exercise Science.

Neuroscience	Memory support, visual cues and task sequencing
Mental Health	Visualizing CBT/DBT modules and crisis care plans
Gerontology	"Armchair travel" experiences and life-story timelines
Physical/Hand Therapy	Animated exercise demonstrations and ADL training
Community Development	Participatory and visual storytelling
Curriculum Planning	Curriculum mapping and staff role-modelling

The Response: High Demand for Training

The staff in the room clearly saw the power of this tool. Dr. Nigel Gribble, Assistant Director of Teaching and Learning, noted that he could "envisage it being used in our classes, assessments, and fieldwork", including Allied Health’s new Professional Honors project groups.

Ruby’s lightbulb moment with SpaceDraft was contagious, with most of the group jumping at an upcoming dedicated training session. This organic demand shows the urgent appetite within Curtin for tools that simplify complex information and deliver content in a more engaging way than ‘death by PowerPoint.’

With Curtin as one of SpaceDraft’s early supporters, CEO Lucy Cooke shared her excitement about the upcoming licensing agreement granting Curtin staff and students Single Sign-On (SSO) access to SpaceDraft with their university digital identity.

From there, all Curtin staff and students can seamlessly access the platform to:

Improve Learning and Teaching Experiences: Save time, frustration, and confusion with consistently structured and templated curriculum maps, resources, and fieldwork presentations.
Quickly and Effectively Transmit Understanding: Create interactive visual stories in minutes to capture tacit knowledge, show learning outcomes, and create shared understanding.
Persist and Share Knowledge: Convert valuable, often-neglected knowledge from conferences and projects into reusable, interactive SpaceDraft templates.

The enthusiasm of Curtin's Allied Health School, driven by the innovative application of a single student, proves the time to adopt interactive, visual teaching, learning, and communication tools like SpaceDraft has never been better.