Motivating Mobility: Interactive Systems to promote Physical Activity and Leisure for people with limited mobility

This project seeks to explore how best to use novel arrangements of interactive and communication technologies to support the well being for people with limited mobility. Our broad approach will be to motivate people to extend or maintain their activities using a combination of mobile technology and interactive personalised games, presented in familiar ways. We wish to explore the utility of this approach in a range of arrangements spanning from indoor bed based setting, through restricted mobility settings in the home to outdoor settings. Consider, for example, a person in a hospital bed after a stroke; they want to improve their arm movement. A simple accelerometer based device on their wrist detects when they move their arm and their bedside television screen presents a view of the inside of their home. As they move their hand / at first maybe only a few inches (later as they get better they will have to move more) they will be able to 'walk around their house'. The premise we wish to explore is that this motivates them to move their hand / essential to recovering movement / but it also re-connects them with their home. In a similar set-up they could play a game with their children or the patient opposite. They can also continue using it at home. Another person may be able to walk outside, but their carer is anxious that they may become ill while out, or get lost. The same device monitors their position and activity / where are they? Are they standing, sitting, fallen? And playful games will be used to encourage them to be more active. The device connects them and their carer, making them both more confident. The device could also raise an alarm if they became ill and their carer would know where to find them.This scoping project will ascertain the utility and potential benefit of this approach by brining together a multidisciplinary research team with expertise in the clinical setting, experience in the technologies needed to realise this vision and in the participative user centred techniques needed to shape these technologies in partnership with those we seek to benefit. This project needs to directly address a number of key research questions: - How do we best personalise approaches and treatments to the needs of individuals?- What is the most appropriate content to engage and motivate people?-Which arrangement of sensing and communication technologies is most acceptable and useful? - How do we best assess effectiveness of the approach?- How might we scale up this approach across the healthcare system?