Integrating physiotherapy with everyday life: exploring the space of possibilities through ReHandles

Recently there have been concerns to investigate the general issues of design within the field of designing pervasive rehabilitation technology. In this paper we take these concerns as points-of-departure to explore the possible roles that digital technology can be designed to take, for supporting the integration of physiotherapy with the everyday life of the rehabilitees. Informed by the perspective of embodied interaction we engaged in four design explorations that were driven by a process of sketching-in-hardware. We take advantage of the rich social, material and physical everyday practices of the rehabilitees in these situations to design four interactive sketches. We reflect on the sketches and the explorations and synthesize our experiences in the form of an emerging space of possibilities. We position these possibilities as particular directions that future endeavors can take in order to design rehabilitation technology that supports an integration of physiotherapy with the everyday life.