Questions:
1. How has the stroke affected your moving abilities?
2. Did you begin to integrate and use any training equipment after your stroke?
3. If yes, which tools do you find useful and which are less motivating for training your body?
4. What motivates you to train?
5. Do you ever train by yourself or is it hard to find motivation by yourself?
6. Would physical or mental games, or both, be more encouraging to stroke patients? Please explain why.
7. Are there any games you could envision which could be adapted and changed to suit stroke survivors and motivate people to improve their condition?
8. What would be most challenging but most rewarding in playing games for patients?
Answers:
1. My 2nd stroke meant I had to learn to walk again (cerebellum). I’m fine now.
2. I had the help of occupational therapists and physio. I went back to the gym and used equipment there to help. I also used online typing courses and online eye exercises.
3. I found early accessible ones more useful such as typing.com and eyescanlearn.com(?) I also found being able to complete my workouts at home was great but I liked the gym equipment and it was a excuse to get out of the house.
4. I wanted to get back to a place where I didn’t have any more affects or if I did, they wouldn’t be noticeable. I also wanted to get back to work as fast as I could
5. Yes I do. It is a bit hard to find time now as I am back at work but I enjoy going. There are classes at my gym, so if I feel a but unmotivated, I’ll go to those
6. Yes! I found while not working my brain missed the Chale ginger tasks that I would normally have such as problem solving and having to think outside the box or for myself…
That’s one thing I couldn’t learn or train while not working. I think also stroke doesn’t affect all people’s ability to think, just their connection to their body so alot of stroke survivors are 100% fine in their mind, they may not be ble to communicate it.
7. Card games, memory games, sensory games ( I couldn’t feel so would put mt hand in my pockets to guess what the object was)
8. Overcoming objects over time.some times things take a while to get over or adjust following a stroke, so repeating the same game or exercise and monitoring progress is a huge win. As progress can seem small it is easy to forget how far you come in your journey. I took a few videos and photos and checked in to see how far I’d come and I was always surprised.
Analysis:
The feedback overall was crucial to the development of my project research, as the stroke survivor specified many of the experiences that were relevant to my research.
The first question was focussed on physical mobility and although the response was very brief, it was evident that after 2 strokes there were many physical challenges, even though they have now recovered.
The patient explained strategies that had to be implemented to improve physical mobility, such as working with physiotherapists and training eye and hand movements. This data suggests that acquiring experience from physiotherapists is relevant to understanding the progress of patients for my research. This is the reason why I intend to create another intervention specifically for a physiotherapist. As this research project focuses on gaming solutions, it was clear feedback to identify how sensory experiences are critical in the healing and recovery stages, which need to be implemented into gaming strategies. Along with sensory development, understanding how to improve memory could also be incorporated into gaming concepts.
With the responses, I could identify that the games could also be easily accessible for traveling, as the patient explained how they would place objects in their pocket to guess what they were to improve the senses.
The patient’s feedback stated how important it was to log improvement physically and mentally through videos and photos. This documentation process could also be considered when building the game strategies, along with emphasis on repeating tasks as a key driver for improvement.
Evidence:
