Abstract:

In the era of the 100-year life, continuous learning, working on health, and having a sense of purpose in life are becoming increasingly important issues, especially for the elderly. While learning and finding purpose are personal matters, the initiative and support of one’s residential area play an important role in maintaining and improving health. In Japan, there are locally unique exercises in many areas, including the lively “100-year-old exercises” designed for each area. Elderly persons have been tackling these exercises at meeting houses in their respective areas, sometimes with the help of their area’s comprehensive support center. The center staff supports the exercise activity by conducting physical fitness tests, distributing DVDs of the exercise videos, and more. However, due to Covid-19 restrictions in 2021, they were suddenly unable to gather in person for these activities. They missed the fun of communication, which had actually motivated their continuous exercise. Therefore, they needed some means to continue the exercise and additional support to stay motivated. In order to solve the issue, we developed a game based physical exercise learning support system for healthcare of the elderly. The system had three main features, pictogram to show body parts movement for each exercises, a follower bud to show target position of movement and a flower bloom to show the body part reach the position, and cheering messages in multi-modal way. The system detects their body movement of each pose using motion capture technology and evaluates the accuracy of each exercise.

After Covid-19, they could come to a meeting place and exercise using DVD video. Therefore, the pictogram examples for the exercise are unnecessary and they require the usual video examples, so we are improving the system as a more convenient total health exercise support system. The improved system has also three main features: select-able display modes, restricted motivational messages in modality, and reservation of automatic online distribution of the exercise. In this paper, we will explain some use case of the system usability and the assessment of the improved system comparing the previous system in the changes in body movements, and also a questionnaire about usability.

Keywords:

Health exercise, Motion capture, Usability, Game.