Enjoyable Physical Therapy Experience with Interactive Drawing Games in Immersive Virtual Reality

Abstract

While virtual reality games have shown a lot of potential for rehabilitation, research on creative virtual therapy is still growing. Considering many possibilities for therapeutic interventions in VR, we can create activities with an appropriate balance between intensity level of therapy intervention with enjoyment and entertainment. In this paper, we propose a creative line art drawing game in an immersive VR environment as a tool for enjoyable upper extremity physical therapy. To examine the validity of the proposed virtual therapy system, we conduct a human-subjects experiment in a mixed design varying the drawing content (Easy vs. Hard; a between-subjects factor) and the user's position (Seated vs. Standing; a within-subjects factor). Our results with 16 non-clinical participants (8 females) show that the change of drawing content objectively influenced their drawing performance, e.g., the completion time and the number of mistakes, while they did not feel the difference in the difficulty level between the contents subjectively. Interestingly, participants reported more enjoyment from drawing the Hard content than the Easy content, and more substantial body stretches in the Seated setting than the Standing setting. Here, we present the main effects of the study factors and the correlations among the objective and subjective measures, while discussing implications of the findings in the context of enjoyable and customizable physical therapy using the creative VR drawing game.