Hello everyone, my name is Nadine Wagener from the University of Bremen
and it is a pleasure to present
Mood Worlds: A Virtual Environment for Autonomous Emotional Expression.
This is joint work with Jasmin Niess and Johannes Schöning from the University of St. Gallen,
and with Yvonne Rogers from the UCL Interaction Centre London.
Caring for one’s well-being and mental health at home has gained in importance.
More and more technologies deal with this matter, amongst others, Virtual Reality.
VR is used in therapy, for example in exposure therapy,
and - in research - for mindfulness training, for stress reduction, or as positive technology.
In gaming, apps support artistic expression, guided meditation,
and emotion regulation, just to name a few.
However, most interventions change the VE before the participant enters it.
Participants either choose which preset scene they want to experience,
or they are assigned to a certain condition
by the experimenter.
The participant remains passive during the intervention.
Other apps support a more active user, but only to a limited extent.
For example, passively collected physiological data such as heart rate or brain activity is used to influence the color.
Further, user can more actively influence the virtual surrounding,
for example by following breathing exercises.
Still, both approaches limit personalisation, self-determination and autonomy,
one of the determinants of positive technologies.
We define autonomy as being independent and self-governing,
as having agency over one’s life and, in the context of this paper,
also over the content and design of a VR app.
Limiting autonomy is troublesome, as becoming active in designing emotionally stimulating content is in itself therapeutic,
can foster happiness, and is also often used in real-life therapy.
This is why we developed Mood Worlds: a refined and revised version of the VR drawing application Open Brush
that allows users to autonomously create a virtual environment
with the purpose to express their emotions.
This paper contributes the following: (1) the design and implementation,
(2) an exploratory evaluation;
and (3) deriving insights for designing future VR applications that foster autonomy and support well-being.
In a pre-study, participants received a box with material in a remote setting.
They then created an analogue mood board based on being happy, sad, or angry.
We derived three themes.
First, we found that it was very important to have a high flexibility of input methods.
Thus, Mood Worlds will offer both pre-defined 3D objects, that can be resized,
and drawing possibilities with 16 different kinds of brushes.
Participants can choose out of six types of environments
with varying levels of being pre-defined
and animated objects such as butterflies that automatically fly around.
Second, some results used single others multiple colors.
Thus, Mood Worlds will offer all shades of colouring
to adjust the lighting and the brush colors.
Third, participants of all emotions reported being quite immersed in their induced mood states.
While some reported becoming happier,
others fear an increase of negative feelings.
Thus, Mood Worlds will only focus on inducing a positive affective state.
We then evaluated Mood Worlds with 16 participants.
In a remote setting, happiness was induced, then measured by the PANAS
and Oxford Happiness Questionnaire before and after doing Mood Worlds.
Then we interviewed them about their experience.
We found a difference in positive emotions,
which were significantly higher after Mood Worlds was completed.
Negative emotions were not affected, which was also intended.
General Happiness, measured by the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire,
did not increase significantly.
Based on the interviews, participants felt free and enjoyed having the possibility to decide.
They also reported that the framework actually helped them in their creativity
and boostered self-confidence.
They were unsure of how to visualise emotions before
and were anxious about the aesthetics,
but by experimenting, they found out what fits best to their feelings.
They reported that Mood Worlds makes everything look nice.
They wanted to give emotions a visible, nearly physical form.
This quote highlights that they enjoyed standing in their work of art and feeling it all around themselves.
Some achieved this by recreating specific situations as in A or B.
Others chose a more abstract design.
To make emotions more tangible, some also incorporated associations to smell and taste,
such as coffee beans and blueberries.
This further relaxed them and gave them inner peace.
Happiness was often visualised as positive energy and it was associated with high activity and life,
which is in turn linked with movement.
First, this refers to animated objects, such as butterflies and fireworks.
Second, participants also enjoyed animated brushes
that move by themselves, for example the plasma brush, stars, and bubbles.
Motion was also mentioned in the context of own movement.
VR has a unique way of immersing users in a 360° environment
where they could physically move through their emotions.
Mood Worlds was also an Emotional Experience.
Users felt childlike excitement, wonder and awe.
It showed itself in impulsive behaviour and spontaneous drawings, as shown by this quote.
They also created a happy and safe place, where they felt inner peace.
Further, they saw benefits in reflecting and meditating upon their emotions
and some reported, that Mood Worlds made them happier
even after having completed the intervention.
Participants also imagined different Use Cases.
A big focus was to design only for themselves.
They could imagine using it repeatedly to gather different worlds in some form of catalogue to dive into at later times.
However, some imagined sharing the experience with friends, which would strengthen the relationship and support their creativity.
Mood Worlds could also help when feeling down.
Participants imagined that they would also feel relaxed
when doing an anger or sadness Mood World
because you then let got of your feelings.
In our paper we discuss how Mood Worlds addresses all pillars
named by Seligman in his PERMA-theory of well-being.
Further, it offers hedonic elements,
as shown by the significant results of the PANAS
and by mediating positive experiences, as shown by our qualitative data.
Regarding eudaimonic elements,
results of the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire are not significant.
However, qualitative feedback hints at the existence of those,
by offering reflection, being aware of personal abilities,
and an increase in happiness.
More research is needed to confirm, though.
Future work in VR for mental well-being should provide autonomous design options
combined with a pre-defined framework.
This provides personalisation while still supporting creativity.
VR apps should be designed in such a way
that corporeality of emotions can be expressed in multi-sensory experiences.
We thought about including smell and haptics to really give emotions a physical form.
Moreover, it should be adaptable to as many use cases as possible.
One could think about creating a Mood Worlds AR or smartphone app
that could be used in the lunch break.
For more information, please read our paper or contact me personally.
Thank you for your attention.