Emotional harm and discomfort in therapeutic extended realities (XR) remains underexamined, even as immersive tools are increasingly deployed in healthcare contexts. We frame therapeutic XR as EmotionTech and reflect on 12 cases from 9 researchers and designers through interviews and workshops. We locate four concerns for emotional harm and identify ways to address them: how to talk about emotion, when to talk about emotion, whose emotions are centred, and which emotions are valued. Building on these themes and therapeutic XR as one form of EmotionTech, we propose strategies to legitimise concerns for emotional safety in design and research practice, legitimise knowers by recognising diverse perspectives and situated experiences, and leveraging ambiguity in design and training tools that foster reflexivity rather than closure. These strategies together reposition design responsibility in EmotionTech innovation and make visible its potential to cause emotional discomforts and harms.

Therapeutic virtual reality (VR) can be a tool, platform or experience imaginary in the healthcare setting. Emotions and affective interaction are integral to the care needs and experiences in digital healthcare, yet remain under-investigated in therapeutic VR. We reflect on four cases involving therapeutic VR to critically examine the function and value of affective interaction. Through a synthesis of the cases, we identify how affective interaction can enhance or diminish healthcare outcomes and even cause potential harm. We draw five recommendations for the design and evaluation of therapeutic VR to challenge assumptions about: (1) knowledge holders and knowledge co-production in design, (2) hyper-visiblity of medical gaze and invisibility of affective experiences, (3) diverse utilities of VR, (4) weaving assessment of affective benefits and harms into evaluation of therapeutic VR, and (5) implementation of therapeutic VR in collaboration with caregivers.

This article introduces a method for conducting a fully online collaborative design workshop requiring no facilitation which we refer to as a Self-guided Collaborative Online Workshop (SCOW).The article provides three main contributions.Firstly, we present a process for the conversion of a faceto-face facilitated design workshop into a SCOW using a method we call the "playboard" which draws on concepts from CSCL literature.Secondly, we evaluate the efficacy of SCOWs using an iterative evaluation with 75 participants, including measures for participant satisfaction, subjective and objective learning outcomes, quality of the online and self-guided experience, and comparison with face-to-face workshops.Results across all measures indicate that the self-guided workshop was as successful as the in-person facilitated original.Moreover, participants reported advantages of the more scalable format including improved access to those with non-visible disabilities and in the Global South.Finally, based on our findings, we present a set of recommendations for others interested in using SCOWs as an inclusive and scalable way to support collaborative experiences.

Virtual Reality (VR) has been used in the context of pediatric healthcare with clinical applications dominating the field, for example to distract a child from pain. We explore a research gap to use VR for enrichment by creating a makerspace with distributed access across the pediatric hospital. The aim is to weave enjoyment into the hospital experience while also empowering children to create their own virtual worlds. The envisioned makerspace forms part of an infrastructure of care to additionally broaden the therapeutic and communication opportunities for patients and carers. We conducted a series of 8 generative workshops with 15 participants (aged 8 to 16), who engaged in worldbuilding and narrative storytelling using the Tinytown platform in VR. Through observation of participants’ engagement with VR, we identified three different maker identities (explorer, artisan, planner) who would benefit from different technology assets and support in a makerspace. Further our findings characterize the experience of enrichment through worldbuilding in VR, and identify values to embed and risks to mitigate in makerspaces in pediatric hospitals. We contribute a set of design considerations for enrichment through VR and building makerspaces for children and adolescents in pediatric settings. Finally we provide reflections on conducting generative research in VR with children and adolescents.

Trauma-informed design is an important yet challenging area due to required expertise for careful engagement with the vulnerable and traumatized person, particularly with children. While technologies have the potential to generate value for the person with experience of trauma, the risk of exposing them to additional trauma due to research and design has ethical implications. We explore this space by engaging with therapists and social workers as dyads of proxies for parents and children with a history of trauma. We conducted a study as a participatory workshop with proxies to understand how technology could support parents in coaching social-emotional learning during episodes of high intensity emotion and difficult behavior by the child. Our findings identified design qualities to embed in SEL technology, and three roles that parents can play in implementing SEL strategies at home. We contribute a set of seven methodological guidelines for dyadic trauma-informed participatory design with proxies.

Volunteer motivation has been researched in HCI in several application domains. However, motivational complexities of digital volunteerism in science-based domains, such as medical research are under-explored, especially when involving volunteers with marginalized identities. We aim to study the socio-technical complexities of voluntary participation in a digital science-based research platform and propose recommendations to enhance volunteer motivation. We describe a survey study of volunteers on Step-Up for Dementia Research platform (n = 266) to capture nuances in their demographics, experiences, motivations, well-being, and psychological needs. Our findings reveal the features that facilitate or impede sustainable volunteer participation and the 5 identities based on which volunteers derive meaning from their work. We propose 8 recommendations to navigate the digital divide and foster inclusion, build wider participation by engaging with the social construction of volunteering and focusing on prosocial values, and enhance volunteer well-being by fulfilling their cognitive, emotional, and psychological needs.

Body maps are visual documents, where somatic experiences can be drawn onto a graphical representation of an outline of the human body. They hold the ability to capture complex and non-explicit emotions and somatic felt sensations, elaborating narratives that cannot be simply spoken. We present an illustrative example of “how-to” complete a body map, together with four case studies that provide examples of using body maps in design research. We identify five uses of body maps as generative tools for soma-based design, ranging from sampling bodily experience, heightening bodily self-awareness, understanding changing bodily experience over time, identifying patterns of bodily experience, and transferring somatic experiential qualities into physical designs. The different requirements for scaffolding the use of body maps in user-centred design versus first-person autobiographical design research are discussed. We provide this Pictorial as a resource for designers and researchers who wish to integrate body maps into their practice.

Designing technologies to support mental health in children is a growing area of research. However less is known about how to design with therapists for children with serious emotional behaviour issues. We conducted a contextual enquiry at an organisation that provides therapy treatment for children of trauma backgrounds. A co-design with therapists of a reflective storytelling activity provided insight into how to integrate design research activities with therapy approaches. Our analysis produced a framework summarising the important elements of a facilitated reflective experience. The framework is intended to guide the design of technologies to support safety, connection, and reflection in scaffolding social emotional learning towards improved emotional behaviour for children. Future directions for applying the framework include: augmenting existing therapy activities with technology, technology to support children learning how to self-regulate their emotions outside the clinic, and technology to help parents in emotion coaching their child.

Walking meditation is a form of mindfulness training, where the act of walking provides a rhythmic meter for attentional focus. Whilst digital technologies to support sitting meditation and walking practices exist, less explored is the first person in-the-moment experience of technology-mediated walking meditation. We present a study of group walking meditation, with and without an interactive rhythmic soundscape modulated by one practitioner’s brainwave data. Six workshops were conducted with novice and advanced practitioners, involving a guided walking meditation with body scan, writing and drawing exercises and a group interview. The analysis yielded themes of shifting state, attention, self-regulation strategy, and immersion and reflection, and insights into how practitioners use sound to synchronize both walking and breathing. We contribute a method for eliciting, and a novel description of, the first person experience of walking meditation, as resources for the design of interactive technologies to support mindfulness practices of walking meditation.

The nascent field of biodesign creates novel applications of life sciences through design methods. Biodesign has the potential to shift interactive computational systems from using purely digital components to systems that integrate living organisms. However, there is a lack of understanding of biodesign and how it advances HCI. We present a review of 41 papers published in ACM Digital Library, IEEE Explore digital library and the Design and Applied Arts Index. We found that existing literature describes aspects of biodesign theory, design processes and artifacts, and educational environments, but not holistically. Based on the findings, we define biodesign as the application of the bioaffordances of an organism. We contribute the Bio-Inquiry model: a methodology connecting user-centered, scientific and critical inquiries to inform the design of interactive artifacts. We discuss the opportunities at the intersection of biodesign and HCI to consider the nature of future technologies.

Recent research suggests that virtual reality (VR) games can engage players in physical activity with high levels of enjoyment. Understanding users’ motivation to engage and enjoy immersive VR exercise platforms is thus important to designers. We designed a VR exercise platform and conducted an experiment with two conditions, one with a static user interface (UI) and the other with an open world environment. Across participants there was significantly (p = 0.03*) greater enjoyment reported in an open world compared to static UI. Enjoyment in both static UI and open world conditions was positively correlated wih user’s psychological needs and experience; autonomy and immersion. Participants’ future play intention was also predicted by autonomy and immersion, but only within the open world condition. Our findings also suggest players can be classified into entertainment-focused and exercise-focused with different expectations and therefore different engagement behaviors with each VR exercise environment. The study highlights the value of informing VR design with measures of psychological need satisfaction.

Volunteering benefits those who receive and those who provide help. Yet barriers can inhibit engagement with and motivation for volunteering activities. Online environments on one hand help to lower some of these barriers, but on the other hand they can introduce new obstacles specially when the medium transforms the social interactions important to volunteers. We study the motivational drivers of online volunteering, and how those are affected by design. Specifically, we focus on relatedness as a source of motivation. We describe two studies with volunteers that help medical students to learn and improve their communication skills through mock interviews in an educational program. The volunteers can participate in the program face-to-face or through an online platform. The first study consisted of a survey (n = 66 volunteers), two workshops and one interview (n = 12 volunteers) in which we explored volunteer demographics, motivations, psychological needs, and experiences. Findings suggested relatedness can be an important indicator of volunteer motivations. In the second study, we added a feature to the online platform to display personal gratitude messages from student beneficiaries to the volunteers in order to improve the experience of relatedness between them. In total, n = 30 volunteers completed 196 sessions. We used survey and system data to assess the impact of gratitude on perceived relatedness, motivation, and behavior (immediate, booked, and completed appointments). Results showed that the expression of gratitude by the beneficiary significantly affected the volunteer’s experience of relatedness which then correlated with immediate appointments booking behavior by each volunteer. The implications for design of online volunteering systems are discussed.

The delivery of ongoing training and support to Advanced Life Support (ALS) teams poses significant resourcing and logistical challenges. A reduced exposure to cardiac arrests and mandated re-accreditation pose further challenges for educators to overcome. This work presents the ALS-SimVR (Advanced Life Support Simulation in VR) application. The application is intended for use as a supplementary training and refresher asset for ALS team leaders. The purpose of the application is to allow critical care clinicians to rehearse the role of ALS Team leader in their own time and location of choice. The application was developed for the Oculus-Go and ported to the Oculus-Quest. The application is also supported for a desktop and server based streaming release.