Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies
Date Submitted: Apr 19, 2021
Date Accepted: Sep 19, 2021
A virtual smash room for venting frustration or just having fun? Participatory design of virtual environments in digitally reinforced cancer rehabilitation.
ABSTRACT
Background:
Cancer rehabilitation is central for helping patients and relatives create a functional everyday life based on the changes in life conditions. The needs are highly individual and include physical, mental and social challenges. Cancer rehabilitation programmes offer coping strategies, including how to handle emotions.
Objective:
This paper presents a participatory design activity where patients in cancer rehabilitation use a virtual environment. The objective is to understand attitudes to, and some effects of, using this application, as well as eliciting ideas of other virtual environments that would be desired.
Methods:
The virtual environment presented here, the virtual smash room, was designed at the request of a cancer patient who wanted a tool for venting frustration. In this virtual environment, the user can break porcelain, vases and plates. Patients participating in a week-long cancer rehabilitation programme tested the virtual smash room and reported their experiences through a questionnaire. The questionnaire was comprised of three sections: 1) a subset of the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI), 2) a subset of the Virtual Reality Symptoms Questionnaire (VRSQ), and 3) a free text response section.
Results:
A total of 101 responses were gathered. The results from the IMI questions showed that the participants found the virtual experience to be enjoyable (mean:4.52, max:5, SD:0.73) and that it kept their focus of attention (mean:4.44, max:5, SD:0.74). The VRSQ questions showed that there were only minor symptoms regarding general discomfort (5,9%, N=6), fatigue (5,9%, N=6), nausea (3,0%, N=3) and tired eyes (8,9%, N=9) , while several participants experienced dizziness (22,8%, N=23). The free text responses indicated that the user group had many ideas for other virtual environments to use in cancer rehabilitation.
Conclusions:
The study shows a concept for using virtual reality in the cancer rehabilitation process and exemplifies activities of patient participation in the design process. Virtual reality has a potential in being both distracting and enjoyable, while certain aspects of cybersickness might be especially important to consider for a user group already suffering from physical and mental issues. The results will act as input in the process of further design of virtual applications in digitally reinforced cancer rehabilitation.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.