Usability of therapist's user interface in virtual reality exposure therapy for fear of flying
Lucy T. Gunawan, C.A. van der Mast, Neerinx, Paul M.G. Emmelkamp, Merel Krijn · UvA-DARE (University of Amsterdam) · 2004
Delft University of Technology has implemented an experimental virtual reality system for treating fear of flying. The patient sits in an airplane chair equipped with vibration devices. By wearing a head -mounted device, the patient is immersed in the virtual world (patient's user interface), sitting in the computer-generated cabin of a virtual airplane and experiencing various aspects of flying. The therapist takes control of what will be experienced by the patient, by using the therapist's user interface. In order to perform comparative studies with the system the patient's user interface was made optimal first for effective treatments. Now the therapist's user interface should be given higher usability. After analyzing the current user interface and its deficiencies, some improvements were carried out. These improvements include a new design of therapist's user interface, including database support and reporting tools, and adding some important features in the patients user interface: lightning simulation, time of the day background, cabin density control, flying destinations, attendant announcements, airplane rolling,. The improvements were evaluated with a usability analysis. Interviews and laboratory experiments were done to measure the usability. And as we expected, the results gave positive indicators leading to improvements of the system usability - as seen by the therapist.