Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies
Date Submitted: Mar 5, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Mar 6, 2018 - Aug 3, 2018
Date Accepted: Oct 4, 2018
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
A Tablet-Based Interactive Movement Tool for Pediatric Rehabilitation: Development and Preliminary Usability Evaluation
ABSTRACT
Background:
Motivating interactive tools may increase adherence to repetitive practice for children with disabilities, but many virtual reality and active video gaming systems are too challenging for children with significant needs.
Objective:
The objective of this study was to develop and conduct a usability evaluation of the Fun, Interactive Therapy Board (FITBoard), a movement toy bridging digital and physical interactions for children with disabilities.
Methods:
The FITBoard is a tablet app involving games controlled by hand, head, or foot touch of configurable, wired surfaces. Usability evaluation involved a cognitive walkthrough and think-aloud processes. Participants verbalized aloud while completing a series of 26 task actions involved in selecting a game and configuring the FITBoard to achieve the therapeutic goal. Therapists then responded to questions about usability perceptions. Unsuccessful actions were categorized as goal or action failures. Qualitative content analysis supported understanding of usability problems.
Results:
Participants included 5 pediatric physical therapists and 2 occupational therapists from 2 clinical sites. Goal failure was experienced by all participants in 2 tasks, and action failure was experienced by all participants in 2 tasks. For 14 additional tasks, 1 or more patients experienced goal or action failure, with an overall failure rate of 69% (18 of 26 tasks). Content analysis revealed 4 main categories: hardware usability, software usability, facilitators of therapy goals, and improvement suggestions.
Conclusions:
FITBoard hardware and software changes are needed to address goal and action failures to rectify identified usability issues. Results highlight potential FITBoard applications to address therapeutic goals and outline important practical considerations for product use by therapists. Subsequent research will evaluate therapist, parent, and child perspectives on FITBoard clinical utility when integrated within regular therapy interventions.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.