Designing a Somatosensory Interactive Game
of Lower Extremity Muscle Rehabilitation
for the Elderly
Chien-Hsiang Chang
1
, Kao-Hua Liu
2(B )
, Hiroyuki Kajihara
3
, Wei-Chih Lien
4
,
Peng-Ting Chen
5
, Atsushi Hiyama
2
, Yang-Cheng Lin
1
, Chien-Hsu Chen
1
,
and Masahiko Inami
2
1
Department of Industrial Design, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 70101, Taiwan
{lyc0914,chenhsu}@mail.ncku.edu.tw
2
Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University
of Tokyo, Tokyo 153-8904, Japan
{maarkliu,hiyama,inami}@star.rcast.u-tokyo.ac.jp
3
Department of Leisure Regimen Management, College of Tourism,
Tainan University of Technology, Tainan 710302, Taiwan
tq0016@mail.tut.edu.tw
4
Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, National Cheng Kung University
Hospital, Tainan 70403, Taiwan
lwclwhab@ms8.hinet.net
5
Department of Biomedical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University,
Tainan 70101, Taiwan
chen@ncku.edu.tw
Abstract. Somatosensory game-based rehabilitation has recently experienced
rapid increases in demand and scale in the health promotion market. However,
the existing research on this topic mostly focuses on treatment efficacy rather
than game usability, experience feedback, and the needs of the elderly when
experiencing the games. To fill this knowledge gap, we designed a somatosen-
sory interactive game focusing on lower extremity rehabilitation, explored the
intention and motivation of elderly patients, and documented the difficulties and
needs of these patients in using the game. We enrolled 15 elderly subjects with
lower extremity degeneration and collected data using a one-group pre-test and
post-test experiment. For the pre-test, the subjects were treated with a traditional
lower extremity rehabilitation program for 1 min, followed by a 5-min question-
naire survey. Next, the subjects were asked to play the somatosensory interac-
tive game for 1 min, followed by 15 min of post-test questionnaire survey and
interview. The results showed a significant difference between the two types of
rehabilitation in the us-ability constructs of “fun”, “liking”, “self-expression”,
“self-understanding”, “intention”, and “fatigue” in elderly subjects with no prior
rehabilitation experience, indicating that, compared to the traditional ones, the
rehabilitation game performed better in introducing rehabilitation to the elders,
enhancing their motivation, intention, and increasing their self-confidence. The
results also showed that the status of lower extremity disease in elderly users did
not affect gameplay. Lastly, we provide suggestions for further improvements in
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Q. Gao and J. Zhou (Eds.): HCII 2021, LNCS 12787, pp. 23–37, 2021.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78111-8_2