Dancing Toes
Assisting people with Flexible Flatfoot in building rehabilitation habits through a new sensor-based foot arch training game.
My Role
Game & app UI, creative prototyping, testing
Team
2 designers, 2 prototypers
Tools
Figma,
Rhino, KeyShot, SolidWorks,
Adobe Premiere
Timeline
2 weeks = research * 0.5 + Design * 1.5
Overview
What is it?
Dancing Toes is a new rehabilitation training game for people with Flexible Flat Feet. It uses pressure-sensitive slippers to detect arch position and feet movement. In this program, by moving their feet with rhythm, users will find the old repetitive training sessions a lot more fun now and are more encouraged to build healthy rehabilitation habits in the long term.
Background
What is flat feet?
Flat Feet (Pes Planus) is a postural deformity in which the arches of the foot collapse. There are 3 degrees and 2 types of flat feet.
Most flat feet (88%) is flexible flat feet, which can be relieved or recovered through rehabilitation training, physiotherapy and other medical interventions. A surgery may be required only in rare cases for flexible flat feet, while in most cases of rigid flat feet, surgery is inevitable.
Major therapy methods of flexible flat feet
Arch supports (orthotic devices)
Arch supports do not cure flat feet, but can often reduce symptoms. A problem of these devices is that they can cause high dependence and the users tend to wear them for a long time.
Rehab exercises
Current rehab exercises for people with flexible flat feet are mainly about moving toes to make arch movements and stress changes. These exercises require people to follow the video to move their feet, and to keep track of the duration and frequency of each exercise themselves.
Problem target
Three main problems we try to address
To avoid dependence and encourage active recovery, we hope to help with the rehabilitation process of flexible flat feet. Through interviews with 6 people living with flexible flat feet, we knew more about their problems:
Confused by the duration of each exercise
Unaware of the rehab progress
Hard to stick to a rehab habit
We decided to use gaming to solve these problems and help people with flexible flat feet build rehab habits at home in a more enjoyable way.
Ideating & prototyping
How to interact and what movements to include?
We tried various sensors before we decided to use Arduino with thin film pressure sensors to collect data of the user’s arches.
