Development of a 3D Avatar to improve the User Experience of a Movement-based Rehabilitation System

Abstract

In the past years, rehabilitation systems have been proposed to allow patients to perform physical therapy from their own homes. To assist them in this task, 3D avatars can be used to guide them through the different exercises. In this paper, we have transformed and improved a movement-based physical rehabilitation system, called Rehabilita, to enhance the user experience of the patients. By adding a 3D avatar to guide users through physical therapy, and updating the UI elements of the system, we have improved the user experience of the patients. These modifications have followed the proposals of a heuristic evaluation proposed in a previous work. An evaluation with real users was later carried out to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of the modifications performed over the original system. The assessment results show that users can follow the steps of an exercise more easily, although some limitations must be discussed.