Rehabilitation Game Model for Personalised Exercise

Existing literature has shown that games and virtual reality can help motivate people thus keeping them engaged for longer. Nonetheless, in most approaches the design of games or virtual reality for rehabilitation purposes tend to apply a basic motivational approach that focuses on the general population of game players. Recent research shows that individuals can be motivated quite differently and so it may be important to consider each individual’s motivational characteristics within the context of rehabilitation to ensure continued engagement. In this paper we present the Rehabilitation Game Model (RGM), which can be used as a basis for evaluating existing systems and for designing new interactive rehabilitation systems that are more personalised and engaging. Initial evaluation of existing rehabilitation games and comparison with commercial games using the RGM indicate a potential over emphasis on achievement based reward systems in rehabilitation game design compared to other reward systems.