Giving Voice to Stroke Survivors and Caregivers: Co-designing Technologies for Rehabilitation Activities

November 19, 2021

Nowadays, 5 million people per year are left permanently disabled and with affected independence due to a stroke. For these survivors, the physical rehabilitation that follows a stroke is critical. Often, this rehabilitation is performed at home, after hospital discharge. There are countless technological solutions to facilitate home rehabilitation. However, currently available technologies miss the opportunity to leverage the role of caregivers. In this work, we engaged in a co-design process with both stroke survivors and caregivers to create a novel home-based rehabilitation system. We started by performing interviews where we disclosed the caregivers’ roles during the rehabilitation process, the emotional state and motivation of each person in the pair, the activities they do (family and rehabilitation activities) at home and in-clinic and the impact and role of technology in the rehabilitation and their lives. After, we conducted co-design workshops that led us to design implications such as the need to design for mobile phones and the need to include features to share their goals and conquests. With those, two versions of a high-fidelity prototype were designed - one with high caregiver involvement and another with low involvement. The proposed design concept consists in embedding daily life activities in the rehabilitation process through gamification features. Both stakeholders evaluated the prototypes. The results were overall positive and the participants preferred the version with low caregiver involvement. Possible improvements were mentioned but we concluded that involving the stakeholders in the design process helps design a solution that fits their needs.

Authors in the community:

• 

  M

  Marta Morais Baeta Domingos Ambrósio

  ist186479

Supervisors of this institution:

• 

  H

  Hugo Nicolau

  ist153934

electrical-engineering-electronic-engineering-information-engineering - Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering

eng - English

Instituto Superior Técnico