Development and Usability of a Cognitive Rehabilitation System Based on a Tangible Object for the Elderly

Abstract

Objective: To develop and verify the usability of a cognitive rehabilitation system with diverse cognitive functional levels based on tangible objects for the elderly population. Methods: A study was conducted to investigate the system's strengths and weaknesses by upgrading it with responses from two groups of 15 patients and 4 occupational therapists. After undergoing three forms of training - regarding executive function, memory, and concentration for a total of 20–30 min, the participants were asked to answer a structured questionnaire about contents of the three forms of training, hardware including the tablet PC functioning as a CPU and display media and tangible objects, and satisfaction of experiential usage of the system. Results: Both groups responded that the most interesting training area was executive function while the least interesting was concentration. Six participants reported that the size of the screen of the tablet PC was inappropriate, and five responded that the size of the tool was inappropriate. All therapists and 40% of the patients responded that they were satisfied with this system. Conclusion: This system’s features include easy manipulation of tangible tools for performing training tasks, easy selection of and training in cognitive areas based on users’ needs, and automatic adjustment of difficulty level based on users’ performance. The training environment was designed to be similar to the natural environment by using tangible objects in both hands as input devices for the system, and the system was considered as an alternative to the lack of community cognitive rehabilitation specialists.