Relearning Balance Through Play
Vestibular Rehabilitation, Adherence & Movement Feedback
The Challenge
Vestibular disorders can make ordinary head movement, walking through a busy space, or focusing while moving provoke dizziness, nausea, imbalance, and loss of confidence. They affect children, adults, and older people, interfering with school, work, mobility, independence, and daily life.
Vestibular rehabilitation is effective, but it asks patients to repeatedly perform movements that trigger symptoms. A specialist may prescribe exercises such as tracing a figure eight with the head, walking while turning the head, or keeping the eyes fixed on a target while the head moves. Practice often continues for weeks or months.
The exercises can be monotonous and uncomfortable, with little immediate feedback about whether they are being performed correctly. Some patients avoid them, practice inconsistently, or abandon the program.
The Big Idea
Can prescribed head, eye, walking, and balance exercises become meaningful play that patients are willing to practice consistently?
A game could turn therapeutic movement into interaction, provide immediate feedback not only on completion but on how accurately the patient performs each prescribed exercise, and show progress over time. The clinical exercise and progression would still be chosen by a vestibular physiotherapist.
Possible Directions
- Map gaze stabilization, head turns, target tracking, or walking-and-turning exercises to game actions.
- Give real-time feedback on movement accuracy, such as whether a head turn, gaze-stabilization task, or walking pattern matches the prescribed exercise.
- Measure completion, consistency, movement quality, symptom reports, and progression against the prescribed program.
- Provide a clinician-facing dashboard for adherence, exercise performance, symptoms, and rehabilitation progress over time.
- Use short sessions, visible milestones, and adjustable challenge to support prolonged practice.
- Design specifically for children, adults, or older adults rather than assuming one interface fits everyone.
- Pause when dizziness, nausea, fatigue, or fall risk makes continued play inappropriate.
What Success Could Look Like
Early success could mean more prescribed sessions completed, more accurate performance, and sustained progression. Longer-term evaluation could examine dizziness-related disability, balance, confidence, and return to everyday activity.
Safety Boundaries
- The game must not choose exercises or increase difficulty outside the clinical plan.
- Standing or walking exercises must account for fall risk and supervision.
- Gameplay must never reward ignoring stop instructions or concerning symptoms.
- Game metrics are not a diagnosis or substitute for vestibular assessment.