Improving Our
Existing Burt® Library
For the Fall 2023 release, Barrett’s product-development team focused on improving existing software in Burt®.
We are grateful to our customers and their patients for helping us focus on the best areas to improve the product.
Feature Updates
Something Fishy is Going On…
More Balanced Fish-To-Shark Ratio
Avoiding getting eaten by a shark is a good motivator, but here at Barrett we know the carrot is more valuable than the stick. In higher levels of FishFood™, patients can now focus on eating fish to become big and powerful, rather than running from an endless wave of sharks!
Catching Fish Balloons no longer a Breeze
While we pride ourselves in building activities that accommodate patients very early in their recovery, sometimes a level can be a little too easy. Level one in FlyingEagle™ has been updated to require more arm movement from patients if they want to get the top score.
Prioritizing Player Choice and Safety
expanded player options IN bLACKJACK
If a patient accidentally bets too much, they now have the option to remove money from the pot. And for the risk-takers out there, Blackjack will let them bet all their cash in one motion with the “all-in” button.
sPEED lIMIT ENFORCED IN tEACH&tRACE™
When creating a new path in Teach&Trace™, the software will see if the movements exceed a safe speed, and will reject the path if so. Paths that don’t move from the starting point at all will also be rejected.
Quality of Life Improvements
Looking Out for Our Customers
Island Levels in TrailMaker no longer freeze
Improvements to Patient Experience
Oftentimes, keeping a patient engaged has less to do with adding flashy features, and more to do with avoiding frustration. Barrett’s team of engineers are always on the lookout for pain-points in the activity experience. The following are a small example of the adjustments we’ve made:
FlyingEagle™ requires the patient to center their arm before the activity starts, preventing them from missing the fish through no fault of their own.
Shadows appear directly below the objects in CatchMaster™, making it easier to orient the net in relation to the butterflies.
In BurtBilliards™, the patient will now feel a haptic “bump” from the robot when they move in and out of the center reticle (the white circle outlined on-screen). This helps the patient understand how their real-world arm location relates to the game space more intuitively.
It’s the Little Things
Sometimes there are tiny events that cause momentary confusion, or a therapist has to stop for a moment to adjust a setting that could have been set up logically by the software. Thanks to therapist feedback and the quality testing process of the development team, we are constantly improving the Burt® experience to help your therapy sessions run as efficiently as possible. Some of the improvements made this season are:
The mouse will no longer highlight un-selected text if the user is navigating by remote or keyboard.
Special fish in FishFood™ now disappear when they are “eaten”, matching the behavior of the regular fish.
In a new BurtResist™ game, forces now start at 20% strength instead of 100% strength.
