Designing a Somatosensory Interactive Game of Lower Extremity Muscle Rehabilitation for the Elderly

Somatosensory game-based rehabilitation has recently experienced rapid increases in demand and scale in the health promotion market. However, the existing research on this topic mostly focuses on treatment efficacy rather than game usability, experience feedback, and the needs of the elderly when experiencing the games. To fill this knowledge gap, we designed a somatosensory interactive game focusing on lower extremity rehabilitation, explored the intention and motivation of elderly patients, and documented the difficulties and needs of these patients in using the game. We enrolled 15 elderly subjects with lower extremity degeneration and collected data using a one-group pre-test and post-test experiment. For the pre-test, the subjects were treated with a traditional lower extremity rehabilitation program for 1 min, followed by a 5-min questionnaire survey. Next, the subjects were asked to play the somatosensory interactive game for 1 min, followed by 15 min of post-test questionnaire survey and interview. The results showed a significant difference between the two types of rehabilitation in the us-ability constructs of “fun”, “liking”, “self-expression”, “self-understanding”, “intention”, and “fatigue” in elderly subjects with no prior rehabilitation experience, indicating that, compared to the traditional ones, the rehabilitation game performed better in introducing rehabilitation to the elders, enhancing their motivation, intention, and increasing their self-confidence. The results also showed that the status of lower extremity disease in elderly users did not affect gameplay. Lastly, we provide suggestions for further improvements in the design of the operational interface, software, and hardware of lower extremity rehabilitation-dedicated somatosensory interactive games.