Gr!pp: Integrating Activities of Daily Living into Hand Rehabilitation

Impaired hand function impacts many stroke patients' daily lives, leading to a lack of independence and difficulty in performing activities of daily living (ADL). There are various assistive devices and interactive exercise monitoring systems that aim to help stroke patients perform unsupervised at-home hand rehabilitation exercises. However, for these efforts to work, the patients are required to self-supervise their rehabilitation process at home and allocate time in their daily schedule, which often is challenging. In this paper, we propose an alternative method. We hypothesize and test the idea of seamlessly integrating hand rehabilitation exercises with the products used for cooking. To this aim, we followed a research through design approach, developed Gr!pp and tested it with two stroke patients. Our results show that Gr!pp can facilitate intuitive use by its form. We also found other application areas of Gr!pp (e.g., eating) and improvement points (e.g., gamification) to promote motivation. We conclude our paper with further implications and our contribution to the tangible interaction design field.