User-centred design for multi-user virtual reality art therapy (VRAT) system
Seung Jin Chung, Inho Choi, younghee han, Hyun-Jae Jo · Journal of the HCI Society of Korea · 2020
With the development of virtual reality (VR) hardware in recent years, a number of industries have led a renewed interest in adopting VR in their fields. Virtual reality therapy (VRT) is one of the domains expecting the effective use of VR technologies because of their presence and vividness. In terms of art therapy, VR has the potential to facilitate creative artwork, not only for individuals but also for groups. However, in art therapy, we have limited knowledge of how to support user experiences, particularly in multi-user VR environments. This study aims to examine user-centred design requirements for successful multi-user VRAT system development. The research collected user-centred data from the perspectives of participants and therapists. The objective of the proposed system is to improve the social skills of teenagers through group VRAT. For data collection, therapists and teenagers were involved in a three-week VRAT session as a group by adopting a variety of research methods: video recording, subjective questionnaire based on five-point Likert scales, System Usability Scale (SUS) and in-depth interviews. As a result, it was found that a multi-user VRAT system can encourage individual creativity and provide new experiences through social interactions. On the other hand, the study points out that solely adding multi-user features to an existing VR drawing/painting application cannot achieve therapeutic goals.