Abstract Exposure therapy (ET) gradually introduces people to the objects, animals, or situations they fear to help them overcome the angst with that source of anxiety. VR(ET) enables exposure to various triggers in the safety of the clinical or home environments. While prior work has explored how specific VR environments support therapy in contexts such as social anxiety or arachnophobia, therapy’s individualised nature is often overlooked. We used an iterative participatory design approach to develop an authoring platform for therapists, enabling them to tailor VR environments during exposure by changing and parameterising elements and reapplying past scenes. We used this platform as a design probe in a study with ten therapists to elicit discussions about the design of VRET experiences and therapists’ authoring needs. Findings highlight the value of controlling the stimuli presented to patients and deviating from stereotypical scenarios, and the importance of further investigating the therapist’s virtual representation.

Virtual Reality (VR) has become a mainstream opportunity to develop immersive environments where people are exposed to relevant stimuli in a systematic but safe way. Besides the controlled exposure to stimuli, VR systems enable a more efficient and unbiased gathering of information with practical applications in diagnosis, intervention, and health monitoring processes. Nonetheless, scientific literature has demonstrated that interacting with VR technology and its peripherals can be challenging, especially in populations less familiar with technology (e.g., older adults) or with clinical conditions that are not adequately accommodated by the technology, such as cognitive (e.g., dementia) or physical impairments (e.g., blindness). This workshop will focus on systems, technological approaches, and theoretical frameworks to develop user/patient-centred VR tools for diagnosis, intervention, and monitoring of health and wellbeing outcomes. Moreover, we welcome work focused on accessibility issues, aiming to promote equal access and opportunity to use VR tools by people with diverse abilities.

Virtual environments for therapy are scarce and lack personalization. The creation of these environments is done by specialists, is time-consuming, and expensive. We present a smartphone tool that allows non-specialists to create navigable virtual environments by taking and linking sequences of panoramic photo spheres, analogly to Google Street View. Editing the environments is then possible in a web platform, myView, where text, images, videos, sounds, and pick-up objects can be added. myView allows users to navigate their environments as well as sharing those environments with others. In a preliminary study with two psychologists, where myView was used as an elicitation probe, the approach was found to be useful for creating meaningful activities for reminiscence and cognitive training. The platform showed to be promising in the democratization of the crafting of virtual environments.