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. Although preliminary results provide promising evidence, indicating a high perception of usefulness, ease of use and intention of use of the proposed environment and principles; further evaluations are needed to investigate therapy effectiveness and patient's safety.