Design guidelines for developing customised serious games for Parkinson’s Disease rehabilitation using bespoke game sensors

• Games for PD motor rehab by translating accredited exercise regime into gameplay.
• Patient-led game design approach.
• Design framework for Serious Games for physiotherapy of people with PD.
• First study proposing guidelines for SGs specifically for PD motor rehabilitation.

The research presented in this paper proposes a set of design guidelines in the context of a Parkinson’s Disease (PD) rehabilitation design framework for the development of serious games for the physical therapy of people with PD. The game design guidelines provided in the paper are informed by the study of the literature review and lessons learned from the pilot testing of serious games designed to suit the requirements of rehabilitation of patients with Parkinson’s Disease. The proposed PD rehabilitation design framework employed for the games pilot testing utilises a low-cost, customized and off-the-shelf motion capture system (employing commercial game controllers) developed to cater for the unique requirement of the physical therapy of people with PD. Although design guidelines have been proposed before for the design of serious games in health, this is the first research paper to present guidelines for the design of serious games specifically for PD motor rehabilitation.