SPELLCASTERs
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.
MY ROLE
Researcher
UX Researcher
UX/UI Designer
Research Paper Contributor
TEAM
Jared Duval
Rutul thakkar
Delong Du
Sherry Luo
Aviv Elor
Kassandra Chin
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.
User Interview
I participated in the physical therapist playtesting and interview sessions and wrote notes on the gaming as I observed it. The playtesting is conducted one-on-one with each physical therapist, which is significant because the team also need in-depth insights and the ability to ask follow-up questions during a live interview.
Coding Research Data
I gathered research questions established in earlier phases of the process and coded the themes with another researcher on the team to enable my team to save time with data analysis for building the companion app.
FINDINGS
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Measurement for Accuracy: Many physical therapists were interested in how accurately the patients performed the spell gesture.
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Gesture Duration: Additionally, physical therapists were interested in determining how long it takes patients to draw the spells.
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Range of Motion: Physical therapists also stressed the significance of observing range of motion. (For instance, their angles and range of motion)
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Ease of Gesture Creation: 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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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 full high-fi prototype here.
USER TESTING
After creating the prototype for the tele-health 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.
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.