Usability study of a kinect-based rehabilitation tool for the upper limbs

Abstract

The execution of exercises during the rehabilitation process is very important to obtain the best result possible in an injury, but the patient often does not known the way to do correctly these exercises and it is unrealistic to have the physiotherapist controlling the execution. With the aim of solving this problem, we have developed KineActiv®, with the use of the Microsoft Kinect v2, as a tool to help the rehab process in a gamification environment, and to study the behavior of the users with the interface and the games. Each exercise is gamified, with different games for different movements. In this paper, we expose the description of the project and the results of the usability study with people with different injuries, doing the same exercises. These results show that the user experience in a rehab process, using new tendencies, with the Kinect camera, under a friendly design and funny games, is positive for the patients.