[DC] Gamified VR for Socially Isolated Adolescents with Significant Illness

Abstract

Adolescents with significant illness face various psychosocial and mental wellbeing challenges during hospitalisation. Social isolation from family and peers is identified as a significant concern for this group. Several digital interventions have been proposed to connect these young people with others, such as video conferencing, social media, social robots, and online games. Research so far has found those to be beneficial for adolescents' wellbeing. Social VR is a novel social interaction mechanism that allows users to interact socially within an immersive 3D virtual environment with embodiment experience. Playing in the social VR space is generally identified as a motivational factor for adolescents to engage in social interactions. Therefore, integrating game technologies into social VR space would encourage and motivate socially isolated adolescents to engage socially intrinsically. The main goal of this research project is to enhance the social engagement of socially isolated adolescents by fostering positive interactions with their peers within a safe gamified virtual environment. In order to achieve that, this research will design and develop an intervention using game and VR technologies. Then, the designed intervention will be evaluated with the target user group to investigate the impact of implemented game mechanics on social engagement and connectedness.