It's been another busy fortnight in Leeds. Fifteen days, in fact,
if you're counting (and I am - I'm like that). You'd think that
things would calm down over the summer, but they stay as busy ever!
I keep promising myself that I'll get round to sorting the
formatting on this blog - and getting my ResearchGate profile up to
date, and getting a LinkedIn profile together... Ah, well. One step
at a time.
I was going to say something more about the Together Through Play
project, but I guess before I start drilling down into the detail, I
should probably say something about my other research, and how TTP
(as it's affectionately known) fits into the rest of my work.
I got interested in the issue of inclusive play through the work I
was doing with Professors Martin Levesley and Bipin Bhakta here at
the University of Leeds on upper limb rehabilitation. This is high up
in my mind at the moment, because we've just published a paper in the
Journal of Usability Studies [1] outlining our experiences!
The project was funded by the National Institute for Health
Research, under the title “Novel Interactive Peer Group Activity
Movement Exercise”. We had intended this to abbreviate to iP-GAME,
but it was always easier to refer to it by the code assigned to it by
the NIHR, which was K005. The project ran from 2008 to 2012, so in
fact, it overlapped a fair bit with Together Through Play. But let's
dial back a bit further.
The whole project was based on the principle of assisted arm
exercise: the idea that for children with upper limb impairments due
to cerebral palsy, their motor skills can be improved significantly
by regular practice, and that practice can be even more effective if
it receives guidance. It's a principle that we've applied with stroke
patients as well, and it replicates the sort of activity that a
physiotherapist would carry out with a patient. The thing is that
physiotherapists are in short supply in the NHS and often patients
have to supplement the time they get with a home exercise plan. This
got Martin and Bipin interested in developing robotic systems that
could provide the kind of support offered by a physio, but in the
home. And since the sort of reach/retrieve exercise prescribed for
these home exercise plans is dull and repetitive, it seemed logical
to give the whole thing a game interface, and they had received an
NIHR grant (this one by the catchy code “G006”) to develop a
powered joystick that would provide the kind of supported exercise
described above by playing a videogame.
This sort of Interactive Computer Play-based therapy (ICP-based
therapy) is a hot topic with the Wii, and the Kinect – though this
grant was back in 2006, before either arrived on the scene – back
when the PlayStation 2's EyeToy (remember those?) was the only kid on
the motion controller block. This was where I was brought on board,
to help with the User testing and to lead the user-centered design of
the games. So, the joysticks and games were duly constructed (by
Andrew Weightman, now a lecturer at Manchester Met) and deployed in
children's homes for evaluation – you can find more detail in our
Journal of Engineering Design paper on the subject [2].
Anyway, the results were promising, but the children who helped
with the evaluation told us that really, they played videogames as a
social activity, and they wanted a game they could share with their
friends. And that was the motivation behind K005, and the “peer
group” part of the activity. I mean, multiplayer games – how hard
could it be? Well, I'll spare the details for next time, but though I
didn't know it at the time, I was taking my first steps on the path
of inclusive play...
References
[1] Holt RJ, Weightman APH, GallagherJF, Preston NJ, Levesley MC, Mon-Williams M, Bhakta B (2013) A System in the Wild: Deploying a Two Player Arm Rehabilitation System for Children With Cerebral Palsy in a School Environment. Journal of Usability Studies pp. 111-126
[2] Weightman APH, Preston N, Holt RJ, Allsop MJ, Levesley MC, Bhakta B (2010) Engaging children in healthcare technology design: developing rehabilitation technology for children with cerebral palsy. Journal of Engineering Design 21 (5), 579-600
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