Making Space for Self-Care: Designing Virtual Reality Applications to Empower Everyday Well-Being

Recent years have seen an increasing preference among individuals to manage their own mental health and well-being, without direct intervention of mental health professionals. Given that one in six people experience mental health challenges at least once in their lifetime, digital solutions could play a critical role in providing autonomous self-care support, both before clinical assistance may be needed and to improve mental health and well-being in everyday life. These so-called self-care technologies (SCTs) can cater to this need as constantly available digital support tools. However, inadequate personalisation possibilities, the failure to create meaningful experiences, and everyday distractions, can present significant barriers to sustained digitally-supported self-care. Among other SCTs, such as wearables or mobile applications, Virtual Reality (VR) stands out for its unique capabilities to address these challenges. It can provide a customisable, distraction-free environment that immerses users in simulated physical spaces while also fostering the necessary mental space, both of which are conducive to self-care.

Recognising that laypeople do not always have a clear idea about the self-care behaviour or strategies they would like to establish, this thesis broadens the range of digital self-care options available to them, with the aim to combine effective outcomes with engaging experiences using VR-based SCT. This work diverges from typical Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) for mental health research, which often examines VR’s clinical use such as therapy for anxiety disorders. Instead, this thesis focuses on helping laypeople autonomously manage everyday emotions and challenges for improved mental well-being. Thus, the overall research question to be answered is: How can VR applications be designed to facilitate self-care practices for laypeople in their everyday routines?

In order to address this question, this cumulative dissertation consists of five parts. Part I identifies and describes relevant research gaps in HCI literature„ defines key terminology, and provides background on well-being and self-care concepts relevant to this work. Part II contributes a survey of current design challenges based on a review of VR applications in the consumer market. Part III presents novel approaches to designing the physical space of self-care applications, exploring the impact of different modalities - passive haptics, auditory, and visual - on increasing the understanding of oneself, a key aspect of self-care. Part IV explores how to integrate support verbal and visual structures and guidance into VR, which can potentially enhance the effectiveness of self-care activities. Finally, Part V discusses the overall findings on a meta-level, presenting key design recommendations and contributing a model that presents specific design ideas that can support the design of effective VR-based self-care applications.

In conclusion, this thesis emphasises the potential of VR as a SCT, providing engaging, supportive, and effective self-care support through the thoughtful design of virtual environments extended by scaffolding elements. Drawing on comprehensive findings of all studies, this work underscores the importance of designing beyond the intervention. It discusses customising options within a single VR application, designing for meaningful experiences over high realism, and optimally balancing engagement with scaffolding elements. This dissertation contributes to a systematic understanding and improvement of VR-based SCT design, forging new paths for HCI research to make space for self-care in their research.