Mind Mansion: Exploring Metaphorical Interactions to Engage with Negative Thoughts in Virtual Reality
Rasch, Julian and Zender, Michelle Johanna and Sakel, Sophia and Wagener, Nadine
Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference
Recurrent negative thoughts can significantly disrupt daily life and contribute to negative emotional states. Facing, confronting, and noticing such thoughts without support can be challenging. To provide a playful setting and leverage the technical maturation of Virtual Reality (VR), our Virtual Reality (VR) experience, Mind Mansion, places the user in an initially cluttered virtual apartment. Here we utilize established concepts from traditional therapy and metaphors identified in prior works to let users engage metaphorically with representations of thoughts, gradually sorting the space, fostering awareness of thoughts, and supporting mental self-care. The results of our user study (n = 30) reveal that Mind Mansion encourages the exploration of alternative perspectives, fosters acceptance, and potentially offers new coping mechanisms. Our findings suggest that this Virtual Reality (VR) intervention can reduce negative affect and improve overall emotional awareness.
2024
inproceedings
Association for Computing Machinery
DIS '24
2305–2318
OFFIS Autoren
