Towards a set of design principles for hapto-virtual rehabilitation environments: preliminary results in fine motor hand therapy

In this paper, we propose a set of principles to facilitate the design of haptic feedback virtual environments for fine hand motor skills. 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 to aid in the design of haptic feedback virtual environments to achieve therapy effectiveness and patient’s safety. In order to evaluate the proposed design principles, we developed a haptic feedback virtual environment based on them and conducted a formative evaluation with 5 patients and 3 therapist. Evaluation results provide promising evidence, indicating a high perception of usefulness, ease of use and intention of use of the proposed environment and principles. However, attention should be provided to overcome some of the challenges introduced by the elements proposed by the principles, notably regarding the patients’ perception of use.