Play with Purpose - An Integrative Multimodal Stroke Intervention Combining Play, Creativity and Connectedness

Abstract

“Art is our one true global language. It knows no nation, it favors no race, and it acknowledges no class. It speaks to our need to reveal, heal, and transform. It transcends our ordinary lives and lets us imagine what is possible.” (Richard Kamler, Artist). Art appears to be a stimulating and engaging activity from all walks of life. Art therapy enables people with stroke to communicate non-verbally and visually, and helps them to creatively express emotions. Virtual Reality (VR) art takes this form of expression a step further by enabling its users to enter a fully immersive environment in which they can interact with art in ways beyond the physical limitations of the real world. Currently, VR art applications in the market are designed to cater to people without any physical disabilities. All applications assume that the user is capable of using two hands to draw, and the ability to select the colours and art tools through various settings within the application. Moreover, there is a lack of tools in the current VR art-making applications that allows its users to form any social connections while they are using it. Therefore, in this thesis we explore the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) aspects and investigate design opportunities for a VR art-making tool as therapeutic uses. We also decided to explore the inclusion of an artificial companion within the VR art-making tool because social companionship has been shown to be beneficial for patients undergoing rehabilitation, even if their companions are artificial, as it alleviates social isolation and increases engagement. A field study was conducted to understand the process of therapeutic art and the accessibility of existing VR art-making tools within a stroke rehabilitation environment. An exploratory and pre-adoption study was also conducted with older individuals with stroke-related impairments to investigate first impressions and likeability of artificial companions in a stroke rehabilitation context. Using the design feedback from the studies conducted, we developed a VR art-making tool with an improved interface (i.e., discrete picker) and virtual companion. We then examined people’s feedback on our discrete picker and virtual companion via a user study and survey. We concluded that VR art-making can be an engaging and accessible activity. Results showed that our discrete picker benefits novice users who have no prior experience in colour theory. While the virtual companion was liked more by the elderly, we found no significant effect in its ability to improve the participants’ overall art-making experience. We discussed how our findings answered our research questions, our limitations, our contributions, implications of our findings on future research, and recommended future directions.