For this product I started out my research with reading this document
This document is a instructional paper written by Jane Aulty, Jeremy Cosgrove and more from the Dept. of Neurology in Leeds.
This website suggests that weighted pens help with tremors which could be an additional component to my digital app. It also suggests writing in smaller letters. Holding your pen between your index and middle finger is also supposed to help.
I then started research into how to help people with arthritis in their finger joints with their handwriting. This website gave me a list of pens and the reason why they would be useful. A lot of these pen designs includes extra support for the grip of the user. This would be useful for people suffering with arthritis and tremors affecting their joints.
I found some videos that explain hand exercises for people with tremors which I will incorporate into my app as my app aims to help with overall health of joints along with improving confidence with writing.
The next step I took in my research was to look for similar apps that already exist both to gain inspiration and check for market value and space.
Similar Apps
In my research into similar apps I discovered that handwriting apps were very popular among kids. I decided to still look at these as children are still in my target audience and there are some accessibility issues I can learn from these. There were apps such as;
Writing Wizard: Was given an overall 4.3/5 stars. Some of the reviews state “Quiz element/ voice recognition would be fantastic” This is something I could implement into my app to help users track their progress.
I did however, find some handwriting apps for adults.
These consisted of a lot of handwriting apps to help with writing styles such as calligraphy. Reviews from an app called ‘Handwriting Success’ with 3.7/5 stars, stated:
“contained too many printable worksheets which is inconvenient”. I will take this advice and make sure there is plenty of in-app practice. I do think having printable worksheets could be helpful for some users, so I might make it an option not a default.
Next week
I hope to start designing my presentation and sketching out layouts