Children with cerebral palsy (CP) have difficulties in participating in traditional physical activities. As they grow up their bodies become bigger and heavier, but because of their condition and lack of exercise their muscles do not develop properly and they experience a decrease in their mobility. As it becomes more difficult for them to move around, the physical access to their friends becomes limited, they experience increased social isolation and this impacts negatively on overall quality of life.
Exergames, video games that involve physical activity, can be effective in motivating people to engage in physical activity.
People with physical disabilities, especially children with CP, have the potential of benefiting from exergames.
Our goal is to develop and evaluate multiplayer exergames to engage youth with CP in physical exercise to improve their physical fitness and increase social interaction with their peers.
For more detailed information on the CP Fit 'n' Fun project please visit our page http://equis.cs.queensu.ca/?page_id=734.
Here are some official publications of the project:
For my Master's thesis I developed a 3D real time collaborative virtual environment in which GUI designers could get together to create and share sketches of their 2D GUIs. I studied the way of producing paper prototypes and a couple of applications that support this task, and identified crucial requirements for performing this task in a real time and collaborative way. I developed a tool considering these requirements, and compared it to a 2D and 3D tool that allowed communication and collaboration between users. Results show how a system built following a user centered design approach can be better than some existing commercial tools, and how existing tools are still short at allowing this kind of collaborative work.
These are the official publications of the project: