Towards Interactive Virtual Environments through Handheld Devices for the Disabled: A Performance-Evaluation Perspective

The successful integration of novel interactive virtual environments for everyday life applications may constitute an important indication towards similarly employing Virtual Reality (VR)-related technologies in primary care. This chapter presents the results of a usability study that makes use of an Android-based handheld device for investigating disabled users’ performance in using an intuitive interactive VR interface for pain assessment. A convenience sample of seven wheelchair users was asked to evaluate the interface and involved the use of non-participant direct observation, note taking, and thinking-aloud protocol to collect the necessary data. The evaluation results demonstrated good acceptance and a generally positive performance of the participants when they completed a set of predefined interaction tasks. It is anticipated that the findings of this study may have good practical implications to the assessment of pain and could open the way for increasing the use of such technologies in everyday healthcare provision. Fotios Spyridonis Brunel University, UK Gheorghita Ghinea Brunel University, UK Tor-Morten Grønli The Norwegian School of Information Technology, Norway Jarle Hansen Brunel University, UK