Over 50% of adults in the US suffer from musculoskeletal conditions, and many require physical therapy to improve their motor skills. However, getting access to providers and keeping patients engaged can be difficult. Virtual reality (VR) offers a unique opportunity to enhance motor skill learning by providing engaging immersive experiences for training balance, gait, and fine motor skills. 

Recognizing this potential, an interdisciplinary team of researchers from California State University, Northridge (CSUN) partnered with CrossComm to develop VR systems that train skills in adaptive and static virtual environments. We were tasked with investigating VR design factors, user experience, sensorimotor learning, and real-world transfer of motor skills through two feasibility studies.

Study I, Locomotive Obstacle Negotiation Task: Learning to navigate over obstacles while walking rapidly. 

Study II, Custom-Designed Forearm and Hand Prosthesis Control Task: Learning to use a prosthesis to manipulate objects.

Role: Lead UI/UX Designer

I developed a virtual reality interface that allowed users to select criteria before starting a trial. To ensure ease of use within the virtual environment, I designed the buttons with large target areas. Additionally, I opted for a horizontal layout to prevent discomfort and maintain immersion, as users would not have to turn their heads more than 30 degrees.

During Study I and II, I designed the user interface which featured various screens such as countdowns, obstacle scoreboards, and navigation. Upon the completion of the trial, which involved navigating through three obstacles, users would view a screen that displayed their results, including the number of obstacles cleared, time taken to complete the task, and the percentage of correct responses on the cognitive task.

CSUN wanted to test whether people could transfer skills they learned in virtual reality to the real world. They used virtual environments to study how humans and VR interact during motor skill learning. To compare VR and real-world performance, CSUN also had users complete similar obstacle courses in their physical lab. I created a mobile app to collect data from baseline tests, which users did in person at CSUN.

The use of VR could greatly enhance physical rehabilitation, and CSUN is conducting studies to determine the best practices for future research in this area. CSUN will be testing the feasibility of our VR system, specifically how users interact with it on a sensorimotor level, how the virtual environments can adapt to meet users' training needs, and how users' performance responds to changes in the VEs. A pilot study is scheduled to launch in the Spring of 2023.