Free Change

Metitur, a Finnish Physical Therapy company, licensed the “Balance Game” which I developed with Joe McKay, Nik Hanselman and Jay Garg. We designed the game building our own Force Plate, a device to measure forces impacting a plate with load cells, because we did not know that there is a whole industry for force plates out there. But at $250 a plate, our DIY strategy payed off. The game itself we designed once we had the plate working, after the old principle that one should design the interface first, then follow up with a fun thing to do with the interface, and only then design the game itself.

The Balance Game allows a player to tilt a board in the game by shifting his or her weight from one foot to another, or lean forward and backward, perhaps like a Segway without the wheels. The force plate is extremely precise, so it can tell very subtle shifts in a player’s body, such as moving a hand slightly. The game itself challenges the player to tilt the board in the game so a colored ball dropping from above bounces into one of four hoops surrounding the board. Perhaps an image might help.

Joe and I also made a video you can watch here. The point of the game is to improve the player’s sense of balance over time. The critical question is how fast a player can change his or her balance in response to a stimulus. Once the game helps the player improve his balance reaction time, the player can respond to real world challenges such as tripping much faster. This should translate into health benefits, especially for seniors. Together with Metitur, we hope to run a clinical study to assess the health benefits of this game formally.