Designing for physically disabled users: benefits from human motion capture – a case study

Abstract

Purpose: The present study aimed to improve the design of an interface that may help disabled children to play a musical instrument. The main point is to integrate human motion capture in the design process. Method: The participant performed 20 pointing movements toward four selected locations. A three one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed in order to determine the most efficient input location. For each button position, we compared (1) the reaction time (RT), (2) the movement time (MT), and (3) the spatial variability of the movements. Results: According to the results obtained for RT and MT, one position was the most efficient button location in order to produce efficient movements. Conclusions: As the case study showed, combining the 3D motion capture system and the statistical analysis led to help the designers their design methodology and crucial choices.

Implications for Rehabilitation

• The paper point out the possibility for designers to use motion capture science to improve the efficiency of the personal interface manipulation to play musical instrument.

• This experiment with the disabled user allows researcher not only to propose standard procedure to characterize an interface but also to take into account the complete behaviour of the user: from the decision of the movement to the execution of the action.

• The discussion and the experiment with the disabled user help him to better understand its own difficulties. This kind of experimental procedure helps a lot the user in his future rehabilitation choices and decisions.

Keywords:

• Design method
• human motion kinematics
• motor skill
• pointing task

Acknowledgements

The authors want to thank the disabled user who performed the experimentations and discussed a lot of times with students and researchers. They also want to thank the students and technician who participate to the installation and calibration of the ZEBRIS system (Zebris Medical, Isny im Allgäu, Germany) and to the experimentations.

Declaration of interest

The authors report that they have no conflicts of interest.