Research

Ongoing - Research Assistant
CP Fit 'n' Fun: Health and Social Benefits of Virtual Exercise Games in Youth with Cerebral Palsy

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:

  • ACM CHI conference, April, 2013. Designing Action-based Exergames for Children with Cerebral Palsy. Paper: , citation:
  • GRAND conference. May, 2013. Bringing Action to Exergames for Children with Cerebral Palsy. Poster:
  • ACM ASSETS conference, October 2012. Liberi and the racer bike: exergaming technology for children with cerebral palsy. Paper: , citation:
  • ACM CHI conference, May 2012. Design of an exergaming station for children with cerebral palsy. Paper: , citation:
  • ACM CHI conference, May 2012. Interactivity Session - Liberi: An exercise video game for children with cerebral palsy.
  • GRAND conference. May 2011. CP Fit 'n' Fun: Health and social benefits of virtual exercise games in youth with cerebral palsy. Poster:

Past - MSc thesis
WeSketch: A 3D Real Time Collaborative Virtual Environment that Improves the GUI Sketching Task

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:

  • December 2010. WeSketch: A 3D Real Time Collaborative Virtual Environment that Improves the GUI Sketching Task. Thesis:
  • IEEE ITNG Conference, April 2011. WeSketch: A 3D Real Time Collaborative Virtual Environment that Improves the GUI Sketching Task.Paper: , citation:
  • Avances en Sistemas e Informatica Journal, 2011. 3D Collaborative Virtual Environment for Real-Time GUI Sketching. Paper: , citation: