Design Principles for Hapto-Virtual Rehabilitation Environments: Effects on Effectiveness of Fine Motor Hand Therapy

We propose a set of principles to facilitate the design of haptic feedback virtual environments, which is expected to contribute to the effectiveness of the fine motor hand therapy. Firstly, we conducted a contextual study in a rehabilitation center to identify preliminary design elements using grounded theory. Based on these results, we defined a set of principles aiming to aid in the design of haptic feedback virtual environments to favour therapy effectiveness and patient's safety. Secondly, in order to evaluate the proposed design principles, we developed a haptic feedback virtual environment based on them and conducted a formative evaluation with five patients and three therapists. Preliminary results provided promising evidence, indicating a high perception of usefulness, ease of use and intention of use of the proposed environment and principles. Finally, to validate the impact of the design principles in therapy effectiveness, we carried out a second study with thirty participants, from which fifteen elderly had hand motor impairments. We found no significant differences in task execution time between healthy adults and elders with hand motor impairments. We found significant differences in precision or accuracy of the exercise. We confirmed the importance of key principles to facility the design of hapto-virtual environments that contribute to the effectiveness of the fine motor hand therapy. Further evaluations are needed to validate our results from a clinical viewpoint. We confirmed the importance of key principles to contribute to the effectiveness of the fine motor hand therapy. Further evaluations are needed to validate our results from a clinical viewpoint.