The program uses the Kinect to sense stroke patients' hand movements, encouraging them to move a certain way by reaching for on-screen bubbles. The bubbles are arranged in such a way to reinforce movements that an occupational therapist would want them to perform. Once a bubble is hit, the user gets positive reinforcement by getting a forward burst in the 3D underwater scene.

Background
Only 5 percent of stroke victims with upper-body disabilities re-gain full use, so helping patients with upper-body rehabilitation is crucial. To figure out how to design the program, we made several trips to the Rusk Rehabilitation Center and consulted with our occupational therapy students at NYU (who helped us with the project).

Audience
Medium- to high-functioning stroke victims in rehabiliation

User Scenario
A stroke patient comes to the hospital and meets with an occupational therapist (OT). The patient stands or sits in front of the Kinect camera and the OT starts the program. At the start of the program, the OT determines what kind of settings they want for the specific patient and starts the exercise.

Implementation
We're using Processing, the OSCeleton library and the Kinect.

Conclusion
We learned how difficult it is to design for a specific purpose, and how hard it is to design for people with disability.