We looked at the  research on virtual reality (VR) games for the rehabilitation of stroke patients done by students of the AUT University (Lewis et al., 2011). This research stresses the common problem of rehabilitation of stroke patients, which is the patient’s lack of motivation and adherence to the treatment protocols, even though the protocols are proven to work. This is because it relies on the visual observation of the patient’s exercise motions by a therapist, which requires the patients time and availability (Page et al., 2002). This highlighted and contextualized a pattern of demotivation previously expressed by our participant.(Floris, 2021) By co-designing with the stakeholders, a fun, engaging, controlled and adaptable VR game was created, which resolved the common problems. The fact the design is adaptable and controlled is important since the design can be adapted to the personal issues of different stroke patients. From this we learned that, with an adaptable design, it is possible to design for a specific user while simultaneously reaching a broader demographic. We took this into account in our own design vision, aiming to make our design easily adaptable to open-source innovation.  

 

Another co-design focused research on stroke patients and technology showed that technology can improve the independence of stroke patients (Nasr et al., 2016), this was interesting to us as it was one of our participant’s major concerns. The researchers performed interviews and visitations to get a better understanding of the physical, personal and social aspects of participants’ lives and the context in which they could envision using the proposed technology. These interviews were based on some “discussion probe pack” activities the patients were asked to perform, this included a personal diary and a camera. 

 

From this research we went on to adapt some co-design methods and theories into our own co-design structure, tailoring the activities to the participants capabilities.