Experience is not Required: Designing Sailing Experience for Individuals with Tetraplegia

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Sailing has a range of positive impacts on mental and physical health-related quality of life for individuals with tetraplegia. This work describes the iterative design process of creating an adaptive sailing experience that requires minimal training and preparation for individuals with tetraplegia. The Tetra-Sail is an adaptive sailing experience that uses a Shared-Control approach to accept input from both the main user and an experienced adaptive instructor (control partner). This approach was used to create a usable experience for individuals with all types of physical abilities, including participants with high-level and complete spinal cord injuries characterized by loss of sensation and function below their site of injury, with minimal preliminary training. A study of nine participants (five first-time users of Tetra-Sail and four who had used previous iterations) suggested that participants found Tetra-Sail usable and enjoyable. Participants expressed feelings of empowerment, which they attributed to the flexible adaptation to their abilities supported by the implementation of Shared-Control.