Emotional Design Strategies for Enhancing the User Experience of Hand Rehabilitation Robots for Older Adults

Abstract

As a result of population ageing, rehabilitation assistive products for older adults increasingly need to meet long-term user requirements in terms of usability, comfort, and interactive experience. Although existing hand rehabilitation robots (HRRs) are capable of supporting hand training tasks, they still exhibit deficiencies in experience-oriented design, which in turn affect user acceptability and continued use. This study aimed to identify and prioritize user requirements for HRRs and, based on their relative importance, formulate emotional design strategies to inform future UX-oriented development. User interviews, the Kano questionnaire, and an adapted quality function deployment (QFD) requirement-prioritization framework were employed for the systematic investigation. The results revealed a clear priority structure. Personalized and adaptive training (H8) ranked first, followed by function–form integration (H3), continuous functional updates (H15), ergonomic wearing comfort (H4), and voice guidance (H9). Clear and readable screen content (H5), timely feedback (H11), positive emotional motivation (H17), and mobile connectivity (H13) also received relatively high priorities. These findings provide a quantifiable basis for design decision-making and subsequent prototype development. The study identifies user priorities and proposes design strategies; it does not experimentally demonstrate improvements in UX, adherence, or rehabilitation outcomes.