ECL Seminar Series - Nadine Wagener

Abstract: Apart from gaming, Virtual Reality (VR) offers more and more support for users interested in increasing their health and wellbeing. More and more VR apps promise help, may it be e.g through exposure therapy, relaxation, mindfulness tasks or emotion regulation support. However, few research has been conducted so far that defines the design space of VR apps for (mental) wellbeing and health: How realistic should virtual environments be designed for that use case? What is the role of VR in relation to real-life therapy? How can VR with its unique features open up new interaction methods that foster self-reflection and emotional expression? And how do users react? These and more will be questions that will be explored in this guest talk. Based on her publications, current ongoing projects and ideas for future research, she hopes to inspire the audience to design and develop more having wellbeing and health in mind, maybe also in collaboration projects

Biography: Nadine Wagener is passionate about broadening the use cases of Virtual Reality (VR) to include approaches supporting the wellbeing and mental health of users. As a second year's PhD student in Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Bremen, Germany, and in tight cooperation with Yvonne Rogers from the UCL London she has been given the opportunity for in-depth research in this field. Her background of Interdisciplinary Media Sciences and working closely together with psychologists give her always differing views on how to approach the topic.