When Virtual Therapy and Art Meet: A Case Study of Creative Drawing Game in Virtual Environments

TL;DR

This study explores a creative virtual drawing game for therapy, examining user comfort and performance differences in virtual environments, with findings indicating difficulty level impacts performance but seating position does not.

Contribution

It introduces a virtual therapy drawing game and investigates its usability and performance, providing new insights into virtual therapy and serious games for healthcare.

Findings

Performance varies with game difficulty

Seating position does not affect performance

Hard mode is preferred by users

Abstract

There have been a resurge lately on virtual therapy and other virtual- and tele-medicine services due to the new normal of practicing 'shelter at home'. In this paper, we propose a creative drawing game for virtual therapy and investigate user's comfort and movement freedom in a pilot study. In a mixed-design study, healthy participants (N=16, 8 females) completed one of the easy or hard trajectories of the virtual therapy game in standing and seated arrangements using a virtual-reality headset. The results from participants' movement accuracy, task completion time, and usability questionnaires indicate that participants had significant performance differences on two levels of the game based on its difficulty (between-subjects factor), but no difference in seated and standing configurations (within-subjects factor). Also, the hard mode was more favorable among participants. This work offers implications on virtual reality and 3D-interactive systems, with specific contributions to virtual therapy, and serious games for healthcare applications.