Uma arquitetura de jogos sérios para avaliação do movimento fino das mãos em dispositivos móveis

Abstract

Serious games, by integrating playful elements with educational, training, diagnostic, or rehabilitation purposes, broaden their influence in assisting activities performed by a human being. In the field of rehabilitation, serious games offer activities for fine motor coordination essential for precise hand movements. A study of the literature revealed a gap in the use of mobile devices as assessment tools for this type of coordination, as well as a lack of assessment methods for coordination in its architecture. This work created an architecture for the development of serious games, focusing on the assessment of fine motor coordination in mobile devices and their technologies. The architecture integrates two formal laws: Fitts' Law, which relates movement time, amplitude, and precision, and Hick's Law, which predicts user reaction time to different available options. The combination of these laws with established protocols allowed for the design of an architecture that can assist developers in creating serious games specifically aimed at evaluating fine motor coordination of the hands. The architecture also incorporated two proprietary protocols, Prot1 and Prot2, specifically created to assess fine motor coordination through motion sensors and tactile interactions, respectively. These protocols enriched the evaluation scope, allowing a more comprehensive understanding of the variables influencing fine motor coordination in the context of mobile devices. Three games were created to evaluate the architecture, which were applied to a group of ten undergraduate and master's students in computing. The first game validated Fitts' Law with screen interactions, the second explored motion sensors, and the third combined a customized assessment with Hick's Law, measuring reaction time and precision. The developed architecture can be incorporated not only into new games but also into existing serious games, optimizing their capacity to evaluate fine motor coordination. The architecture showed promising results, including the effective applicability of Fitts' and Hick's formal laws on mobile devices, demonstrating their potential in the analysis of interactions and introducing a tool to assess fine motor coordination in these devices. A comparison was made with the architectures available in the literature, highlighting the characteristics of the proposed architecture, showing its flexibility and adaptability.