WaterBall: The Exergaming Design for Rehabilitation of the Elderly

Abstract

This study applied the concept of closed chain exercise to WaterBall, which combines rehabilitation exercises with a digital game. By using WaterBall, the elderly can enjoy the benefits of both entertainment and rehabilitation. In addition, WaterBall provides multi-touch control, is easy to use, and have the potential to improve physical activity in older adults The elderly can play the game intuitively. WaterBall Exergaming was used by 52 residents of an elderly community, and they reported that WaterBall offers exercise and fitness, enhances the efficiency of exercises, and provides entertainment and interaction.

On the Conceptualization, Design, and Evaluation of Appealing, Meaningful, and Playable Digital Games for Older People

“…Over the past decade, there has been a steady production of digital games targeted at older people. Examples include DanceAlong (Keyani, Hsieh, Mutlu, Easterday, & Forlizzi, 2005), Curball (Kern, Stringer, & Schmidt, 2006), Walk2Win (Mubin, Mahmud, & Shadid, 2008), Age Invaders (Khoo, Merritt, & Cheok, 2009), Activator (Romero, Sturm, Bekker, de Valk, & Kruitwagen, 2010), SilverPromenade (Gerling, Schild, & Masuch, 2010), Virtual Soccer , Human Tetris and Mosquito Invasion (Rice et al, 2011), Paldokangsan (Kim, Oh, Ahn, & Lee, 2012), Waterball (Tsai, Chang, Huang, & Chang, 2012), Cogniplay (Vasconcelos, Silva, Caseiro, Nunes, & Ferreira, 2012), iStoppFalls (Gschwind et al, 2014), and Blast from the past (Vanden Abeele & De Schutter, 2014). Central to their design has been to help older people to cope with age-related changes in functional abilities, improve/enrich grandchildren–grandparent communication, and encourage social interaction.…”

FroggyBobby: An exergame to support children with motor problems practicing motor coordination exercises during therapeutic interventions

“…(Berkovsky, Freyne, & Coombe, 2012), Move2Play (Bielik, Tomlein, & Barla, 2012), Life is a Village (Yim & Graham, 2007)), and support motor rehabilitation (e.g. Arrow Attack (Burke et al, 2009)) for different populations (e.g., children with cerebral palsy (Hernandez et al, 2012), older adults (Tsai, Chang, Huang, & Chang, 2012), and stroke patients (Burke et al, 2009)). Other projects have investigated the motivation and the gaming experience of exergames (Pasch, Bianchi-Berthouze, van Dijk, & Nijholt, 2009) studying the effects of competition and competitiveness in exergames (Song, Kim, Tenzek, & Lee, 2013).…”

Evaluation of the Game Exermon – A Strength Exergame Inspired by Pokémon Go

“…Physical activity promoted through exergames has many benefits such as lower risk of early death, coronary heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, type-2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, colon cancer, breast cancer and reduced symptoms of depression. Most existing exergames can classified into the two categories of games to stimulate to general physical movement of the player [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] and games for elderly or patients to improve physical strength and balance [10][11][12][13]. Further there are exergames that explores the borders of the physical and virtual world [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22].…”