Broad Research Interest Area

Virtual Reality

I have always been interested in virtual reality since i was in my bachelor studies. It was a privilege for me to be get a hold of an Oculus development kit from my previous university. I made a DSLR simulation VR with Unity even though the results of my paper did not meet my expectation.

However, before deciding on the DSLR simulation topic, I am mostly intrigued with the idea of utilizing virtual reality as a form of therapy either using it professionally or for individual personal use. I intend to create a certain virtual space where certain people can find treatment purposes in it.

Why?

Though I am mostly interested in game development previously, with my knowledge in Unity, I wanted to find a way to help people through virtual reality. I believed that virtual reality holds a great advantages compared to exposure and imaginal therapy or normal computer-based therapy. It holds the immersion and control that I believe none other approaches could achieve.

Another reason is that how virtual reality therapy could actually still be explored much more in different kinds of anxiety disorder. As described by Temming (2018), there are upcoming programmes that cover challenges such as depression, addiction, eating disorders and so on.

However, one interesting topic that I wanted to explore is to create a virtual reality therapy that can be used personally without the guidance of a professional therapist. I am aiming on something simple such as relieving stress or helping people to get to sleep though i have not yet found any papers regarding this kind of topic as mostly covers anxiety disorders treatment that needed a therapist accompaniment.

Three Things I Know About

• Virtual reality have high immersion which have been proven to be able to provide treatment in various psychological disorders
• Virtual reality exposure therapy has been conducted since 1990s
• Devices for running virtual reality applications are getting more accesible to the public and with reasonable prices

Three Thing I Don’t Know About

• Methods to extract correct and valid data from a virtual reality therapy treatment
• The consequences on a virtual reality therapy application to the users that could be accessible to the public
• Type of psychological disorder that needed attention and solutions where virtual reality therapy approach could help

Do Something or Research?

I am truly not sure about this choice as I can’t exactly pin point my topic approach in virtual reality therapy. However, if I am obligated to choose from 2 of those, I would prefer to do something or possibly create something.

Sources

So far, not much closely-related forums or groups were found. The sources gathered are mostly articles and scholarly papers. Here are some of the sources I have found.

This article talked about several virtual reality treaments that have been done so far and how it successfully treat people more effectively than traditional therapy. It covers the topic of public paranoia, PTSD, fear of heights and several more.

Temming, M. (2018, November 1). Virtual reality therapy has real-life benefits for some mental disorders. Retrieved October 13, 2019, from Science News website: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/virtual-reality-therapy-has-real-life-benefits-some-mental-disorders

An article about virtual reality therapy on chronic pain patients which is one of the few I found that is not directly treat a psychological disorder. It successfully conducted a test to let patient learn about mindfulness-based stress reduction.

Gromala, D., Tong, X., Choo, A., Karamnejad, M., & Shaw, C. D. (2015). The Virtual Meditative Walk: Virtual Reality Therapy for Chronic Pain Management. CHI ’15 Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 521–524. https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2702344

This is one of the article that I have reviewed in an assessment. It is one of the first conducted virtual reality treatment in the topic of fear of flying.

Wiederhold, B. K., Gevirtz, R., & Wiederhold, M. D. (1998). Fear of Flying: A Case Report Using Virtual Reality Therapy with Physiological Monitoring. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 1(2), 97–103. https://doi.org/10.1089/cpb.1998.1.97