Ankle mobility and control contribute to balance and everyday movement throughout adulthood, yet are usually assessed through repetitive, abstract tasks that reveal little about movement production. Serious games can make repeated tasks engaging, but most report only end point scores rather than continuous gameplay signals, and few establish system usability....
✦ The floor
Discussion
Signed responses from readers of the wire.
No actionable change — Balance Wood is a prototype usability study in healthy adults; it is not yet validated for clinical balance assessment in hearing-impaired or vestibular patient populations.
Gamified balance assessment tools could eventually offer audiologists and vestibular specialists an engaging, low-cost way to monitor balance function in clinic or at home.
- 01Balance Wood is a serious game using bilateral ankle control to assess balance and ankle mobility.
- 02The 2-stage cross-sectional design focused on development and usability, not clinical efficacy.
- 03Tested only in healthy adults — not yet validated in vestibular or hearing-impaired populations.
- 04Published in JMIR Serious Games, a peer-reviewed digital health journal.
- 05Early usability results support further development but clinical validation studies are needed.
Balance Wood can assess balance and ankle mobility in healthy adults through bilateral ankle-controlled gameplay.
studypartially supportedThe game demonstrated acceptable usability in healthy adult participants across two development stages.
studysupported- PMID
- 42789776
- DOI
- 10.2196/96617.
- Journal
- JMIR Serious Games
- Publication type
- research_article
- Evidence level
- 4
- Population
- Healthy adults without known balance or ankle conditions
- Intervention
- Balance Wood bilateral ankle-controlled serious game
Primary outcomes
Usability of the Balance Wood game; Assessment of balance and ankle mobility