POINTS

Playful objects for inclusive, personalized movement games

Fostering exercise and facilitating fun in sports and physical activity is a dedicated goal of schools, but still children and teenagers do not get enough exercise and movement which can result in the formation of chronical diseases. As sporting activities often build on coordinating visual attention and movement, thus this is an additional barrier for blind and visually impaired persons. Moreover not enough suitable sporting equipment for blind and visually impaired people is available. Digital supported movement games (exergames or location based games) are highly motivating, thus increasingly gaining importance in fostering exercise. Although accessible movement games exist, so far no game has been developed that uses personalized roles of players, to enable players with different impairments to play as a team.

The overall goal of POINTS was to create novel physical team games and equipment in strong cooperation with visually impaired and blind students by applying a critical making approach. Critical making fosters critical thinking and reflection by active and independent creation of technology. Critical making enables students to actively participate in the scientific design process by using established design methods to answer scientific questions. The developed movement games enabled players to participate in the game with respects to their preferences and physical impairments. Due to personalized roles the game was balanced in a fair manner. Experiencing fun through movement and physical exercise resulted in positive effects on the health of students and the team play within the games resulted in positive group dynamic effects.

This project has been completed.