In this virtual reality game, wizards perform stroke physical therapy activities while casting spells with wand gestures. In Spellcasters, physicians can use a cutting-edge bespoke gesture creation sandbox to design gestures that are suitable for the unique needs of their patients.
Duration
Nov 2020 - Aug 2021
Team
Jared Duval
Rutul thakkar
Delong Du
Sherry Luo
Aviv Elor
Kassandra Chin
Tools
Figma, google sheets, overleaf
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Key Responsibility
User interview, Competitive Analysis, Coding research Data, personas, User Flows, Low-fidelity screens, Prototyping, Visual design, User testing, Research Paper
What Is Spellcasters?
Patients who undergo standard stroke therapy frequently receive instructions to perform arm extensions for 2-3 sets of 12–15 repetitions. Spell gestures are workout motions that stroke patients with upper arm extremities can perform instead of their usual rehabilitation in the virtual reality game Spellcasters. Patients who successfully complete the motions are rewarded with the capacity to design objects in 3D space, such as trees, flowers, and fruits.
CHALLENGE
In order to incorporate data metrics into the design of the companion Telehealth App, the team must assess and establish data metrics.
Stakeholders
Our main stakeholders for the Telehealth app are physical therapist and their stroke patients.
Identifying what the users wanted
The goal of this research was to understand what the physical therapist wanted to see on the Telehealth app. The main question we wanted to know was what reports are clinicians interested in for decision making.
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Primary Research
11
Physical therapist zoom interview
Secondary Research
15
Literature Reivew
3
Competitor Anaylsis
FINDINGS
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Many physical therapists were interested in how accurately the patients performed the spell gesture.
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Additionally, physical therapists were interested in determining how long it takes patients to draw the spells.
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Physical therapists also stressed the significance of observing range of motion. (For instance, their angles and range of motion)
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The need for an easy method of designing and assigning the gesture spell exercises was recognized by physical therapists. Physical therapists have expressed a need for a library of spells they can quickly drag and drop patients into.
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Core Values
Measurement for Accuracy
Range of Motion
Gesture Duration
Ease of Gesture Creation
Finding the Best Solutions
Defining Key Functionalities
We had decided on what the main features were going to be on our Telehealth app which would provided sufficient and impactful solution.
Library
Physical therapists are able to create, add, and delete motions for the patients to do on the game
Patient Data
Physical therapists are able to read their patients recorded data based on time, accuracy, range, etc.
Impact
Our team was very close to the deadline for the stakeholder presentation, and the findings helped elaborated the overall direction for the App.
Personas
The personas below were developed utilizing behavioral observations that physical therapists saw because of the limitations of COVID-19 and working with stroke patient demographics who frequently had cognitive problems. It's vital to keep in mind that they might not accurately reflect the difficulties that stroke patients actually face, but rather the behavioral difficulties that physical therapists have seen when dealing with them.
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Despite these restrictions, the personas were nonetheless developed since they offered a useful means of discussing some of the typical stroke-related impairments and aspects of daily living with the designers and the rest of the team.
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The personas will also be helpful during the subsequent iteration of the usability testing, where the team intends to develop a scenario task where physical therapists will utilize the VR game and Telehealth App to demonstrate how they might use it to treat patients who are represented by the personas.
Prototype
The findings helped clarify the general direction for the App since our team was extremely near to the deadline for the stakeholder presentation. Additionally, the Telehealth App now incorporates all of the significant findings. We assembled multiple frames and iterations using Figma.
Low-Fidelity
High-Fidelity
See the final prototype here.
USER TESTING
After creating the prototype for the Telehealth app, we interviewed 11 physical therapist that tested out the game along with the app. We took notes on how they interacted with the app, and their comments on it. For example, what they liked, disliked, what can be improved, etc. I updated the prototype based on the users input. See the full notes below.
Limitations
Due to the pandemic, we weren't able to meet any of the stroke patients in person to test out the VR game and companion Telehealth app. We were limited to online meetings and people who had their own VR set to test out the game. The people who did not have the VR set were limited to just seeing a scared screen of someone else playing the game. This companion app was tested only through the physical therapists. In the future, when covid has subsided, I would like to then continue on with the stroke patients to get both sides of our target audience.
Reflection
What I learned from this project...
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There is always more I can research
My team and I discussed a lot of ideas, which really helped us understand the value of interacting with users directly. It's common to need more user research, go back to your existing study, and re-analyze your notes when you have a question or are unsure about supporting a particular product or update.
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Don't do too much to fast
As we finished with our interviews, my team and I found ourselves wanting to add a bunch of features right off the bat. This later became a very overwhelming for us as we didn't have much time to fully prioritize our main goals and features. Setting the most crucial concepts first and concentrating just on them helped at this point.
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Put away your biases
Early on in this project, I was pretty certain of the features I wanted to include in the Telehealth app and I wanted to start designing for it right away. However, I discovered that there was so much more that was needed that I was never aware of or knew about until after researching and discussing with the users.
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RESEARCH PAPER
After my team finished with the final touches of the companion app and VR game, we decided to write a research paper discussing our findings and what we did on overleaf. We eventually were able to have our paper published which can be found here.