Innovation in Shared Virtual Spaces for Therapy

Backer, Jake R.

Student Work

Innovation in Shared Virtual Spaces for Therapy

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Rates of mental health disorders among adolescents and younger adults are on the rise with the lack of widespread access remaining a critical issue. It has been shown that teletherapy, defined as therapy delivered remotely with the use of a phone or computer system, may be a viable option to replace in-person therapy in situations where in-person therapy is not possible. Sponsored by the User Experience and Decision Making (UXDM) lab at WPI, this IQP is part of a larger project to address the need for mental health therapy in situations where patients do not have access to traditional in-person care. This project investigates the use of Augmented Reality technology to provide a similar experience to in-person care while remaining remote. Augmented Reality is an innovative technology that allows for virtual “holograms” to appear in the real world, blending the real and virtual worlds together. This IQP was focused on creating a minimum viable product (MVP) that could facilitate the basic level interaction between two or more users in a virtual space. By doing so, this IQP served as a basic step toward developing AR teletherapy prototypes for the larger project. A user study was also conducted at WPI (N=48) to solicit students’ opinions on AR technology as it relates to mental health therapy. Keywords: mental health, therapy, anxiety, depression, augmented reality, HoloLens

This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

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