Overview:
In product development, designing for disabilities is a highly important and challenging area of focus. Designing for specific groups is not refined to products alsone. An emerging area of research within Rehabilitation science is the use of Virtual Reality and associated technologies / devices to assist the development of neuromuscular dexterity and control. The University of Ulster, School of Health Sciences have been researching the effect that video games have on the users coordination skills specifically for individuals with neuromuscular conditions. They have been conducting clinical trials using existing games with haptic devices such as the iToy.
Examples of related clinical research
- Betker et al 2006- Video game based exercises
- Broeren et al 2004 - VR and Haptic Devices
- Lin et al 2002 - Eye tracking in games design
- University of Pittsburgh 2000
Design Brief :
Games include 2D, 3D and 4D design, know-how. Content development is an ever growing sector of the games industry which requires the cognitive processes and skills indicative of designers. Through new content development, unique and progressive game-play can be designed and developed for specific needs, resulting in effective, bespoke solutions. Your challenge is to firstly identify a specific neuromuscular condition as the focus for your game proposal. From first hand research, scientific and engineering journal publications, research and document the methods and techniques used to assist the rehabilitation of a selected condition. Based on this research identify the stages or levels of rehabilitation and propose logical game-play activities which encourage improvement. The game concept must have the addictive attributes of mainstream gaming. There should be elements of competitiveness, click-ability, progressive achievement, rewards, physical and cognitive challenges and entertainment value.
Leading researchers in the Faculty of Life and Health Science have supplied a brief specification . This is your "live brief", and is indicative of commercial client briefs.
Brief Specification:
Goals:
Repetition is rehabilitation is very important. We would like this game to motivate increased repetition (more movements= higher score) but also give the user a sense of joy when they are successful or have achieved a certain number of movements in a certain time e.g. movement joy=success, feedback with music, colours of environment more vivid indicating success?
Secondly we would like to explore how different environments affects movement e.g. a scary scenario (standing at the top of a building, walking on a rope/girder versus walking in a nice meadow, could collect heart rate, blood pressure and skin resistance data to measure any increase in stress, see Fig. 1).
Fig. 1
Types of movements to be encouraged in the game:
- eye hand co-ordination
- head movements
- shoulder elevation
- bilateral arm movements (both arms moving together) versus single arm movement
- balance movements e.g. amount of sway when standing, how sway changes when standing on one leg. Time standing on one leg-game could be organised to increase the time doing this task or other tasks/movements
- walking
Prerequisites for the game:
Feedback very important: sound, scores-immediately, summary at end of game, improvement in scores over time (i.e. weeks)
Feedback could be visual (could see image of yourself or an enhanced version of yourself?), verbal
Sensory/haptic
Other considerations
- It may be useful to feed some of the user characteristics into the game e.g. height, weight, flexibility, range of movement of body parts e.g. back, knee, arm, shoulder etc. This could be used to show changes over time e.g. we could use this game to encourage weight loss so once some weight loss has been achieved this could be fed into the game thought visual, verbal, sound feedback?
- We could measure muscle activity or weight distribution in standing/sitting and feed it back to the users, how might this be presented to them in the game-as sounds, colours, objects?
Your proposed solution should be developed either in part or completely using 3D computer graphics. The platform is for PS and will use the iToy or other proposed external devices. The following is required for assessment.
Research
- Visual Research diary (Hard back filled with comments, Images and Journal extracts of characters / prop and / or environments which influence your design)
- A2 Mood Board (expressing the theme of the game, styling and type of activities related to the neuromuscular condition)
- Filed related scientific/ engineering journal publications.
- Brief project report to include Journal summaries (fully referenced) leading to a design specification for the core values of the game.
- Power point presentations
Development
- Level design Concept sketch book illustrating the game-play concepts and a diagrammatic layout of the virtual world of the game (>30 pages A3 Format)
- Character / prop and / or environment design sketch book illustrating your original content development proposals (>30 pages A3 format)
Presentation
- Title and branding of the game
- Level walk through orthographic drawings - plan and side views (using a CAD package, freehand or Illustrator) includes scale bar - PDF and printed A2. This should also indicate various altitudes and split levels within the virtual world of the game. It provides an overall visual of the game world at a glance.
- Final renderings, A2 format- 3D visuals illustrating 3 key game-play scenarios. Marker and pastels, Photoshop and/or 3DSMAX/ MAYA. These should illustrate how the game is played, identify how it benefits the user, demonstrate the on screen game achievements for a selected level of play.
- Moving image show-reel. This can be a mix of still and animated footage which communicates the concepts of the game, how t is played and an example of the on-screen experience.
If working in a group a separate combined presentation show-reel should be developed
