My research assignment involves an extension of Looking Glass, modified into a game development environment for physical therapists to design their own stroke-therapy games. Wii-like interactive games have demonstrated great promise in the realm of rehabilition, creating a fun, motivating environment for patients to perform therapy excercises in. Our target audience, stroke survivors, differ dramatically in rehabilitation needs, therefore a generic therapy game cannot hope to envelop such unique needs of stoke survivors. On the flip side, freelancing programmers to create games individualized games takes extensive amounts of time--and therefore money.
What are the alternatives? The average therapist lacks the programming knowledge to create robust rehabilitation games. This is the gap Dr. Kelleher's Stroke Therapy Games research group attempts to bridge. By creating a free, non-coder-friendly environment in which therapists can rapidly develop therapy games, the large time and monetary costs of game development can be cut. The ease of development will allow occupational and physical therapists the freedom to customize their games to the individual case of each stroke survivor.