Qualitative Research
Kelleher, C., Tam, S., May, M., Profitt, R. & Engsberg, J.
Towards a Therapist-Centered Programming Environment for Creating Rehabilitation Games Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Computer Games pp. 240 – 247.
Link to abstract: ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=6000346
Objective: to discover the ways therapists describe video games in order to help create therapist-programmed video games for clients and rehabilitation goals. Characterizing the language therapists use to talk about video game-based therapies can help programmers, and may lead to games that can be programmed by therapists to suit the specific therapy goals of their patients.
This study comprises two parts:
- a language study to elicit therapists’ descriptions of the relationship between players and the game environment.
- have therapists build games using simple programming to suggest guidelines for supporting therapists to program games.
The first study introduced ten occupational therapists to seven video samples showing both the player and the player’s related action in the video game. Therapists were asked to describe in words or drawings “how the computer should perform the actions depicted in the clip”. This information was categorized into six properties describing various motions, the relationship between the player and game motion, and the relationship between the sensors and body parts.
The second study had eight rehabilitation occupational therapy graduate students do programming of a rehabilitation game using a simple program, Looking Glass. These subjects identified a target motion, then designed a game around that motion.
Outcomes:
Some of the guidelines that might help a therapist-friendly programming environment include:
- creating an avatar or player object for therapists to manipulate to see how the game responds,
- relating movements to player body parts rather than what the sensor does or detects,
- describing movements and distance relationships in the game in therapist-centric language
- providing a model of game development
- avoiding calling attention to the hardware
- improving the efficiency of game creation