Haven Wood
Movement therapy is an essential part of rehabilitation and can become a key element for quality of life.
Havenwood was developed to be a Virtual Reality Hub for training and exercising alongside a conventional therapy session.
Taking full advantage of VR, the hub was developed to aid in motivation during therapy and to offer a solution for save at home therapy sessions.
Interactions
In therapy, each patient has different goals and problems, for which special tasks are chosen to reach said goal. During development, my focus fell on three essential areas of
therapy that came up regularly when meeting with therapists. These areas were also found to be the best suited to showcase the possibility of VR-therapy.
These are the following:
Balance Training
The absence of balance control can lead to a multitude of problems and increase the risk of falling.
Control Training
Training the control of the upper body includes the shoulders, arms, and hand and is important for the daily live
Reflex Training
Reflexes can be lost after storks or other nerve and brain damages and are an unconscious reaction of the body.
Haptic
To assure a safe at home practice, this project put a strong focus on haptic feedback. As haptic is the fastest of the human sense, it can greatly improve the VR interaction, increase immersion and help guide the user thought the experience.
To ensure a fitting haptic feedback, each interaction had their special feedback design for them, using vibrotactile feedback from the OCULUS RiftS controllers as well as a self designed and developed haptic feedback system the “VibroStep”
Companion
To keep up the motivation and to create a meaningful reason for the user to return daily to the application, the companion was added.
The small creature named "PineCone" gives the user tasks and ask for help creating a small story through the interactions.
When a task is successfully finished he will cheer for the user.
The HUB
To create a sense of exploration and a motivation to explore what next to come, the concept of a hub was developed.
Showcasing the different levels and stages the user can achieve, can be used to furthermore showcase the development during the therapy process.
Using pas trough to place the island inside the users home was a means to create a bond back to reality and to visualize the achievement in the surroundings of the real world.