Participatory Design of a Virtual Reality-Based Reentry Training with a Women's Prison

Teng, Melissa Qingqing; Hodge, James; Gordon, Eric

doi:10.1145/3290607.3299050

Cited by 23 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…By translating VR’s core affordances into analog workshop activities, we were able to make some technical aspects of VR production more accessible. But VR editing remains a highly specialized, labor-intensive skill requiring costly post-production technologies inaccessible to most institutions, let alone prisons (Teng et al, 2019). Although the incarcerated women could not physically participate in shooting or editing the final 360° videos, we used the rich process notes taken by workshop facilitators to try including the women’s voices in this phase.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Therapeutic virtual reality in prison: Participatory design with incarcerated women

Teng

Gordon

2021

New Media & Society

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Upon release from prison, women face barriers in every step of their journey home, with most reentry services designed for men. With virtual reality (VR) headsets increasingly affordable and normalized as a mental health treatment modality, VR is being adopted by prisons around the United States. We argue that the risks and affordances of VR in this political context necessitate centering those with lived experience as creative agents to avoid designing media that re-traumatizes, reduces the complexities of reentry, and reproduces oppressive prisoner–guard dynamics. This article documents and analyzes the design process of a VR reentry program for a state prison to help incarcerated women practice responding to high-stress reentry situations, prior to their release. The resulting VR prototype draws on therapeutic VR work but takes a community-based participatory design approach. We conclude by discussing the institutional and cultural tensions of implementing a participatory design process in a US state prison system.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Therapeutic virtual reality in prison: Participatory design with incarcerated women

Teng

Gordon

2021

New Media & Society

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“…Examples of HCI to design digital support for people leaving prison are limited [22,70]. Teng et al give an indication of why: in their design of a virtual reality-based reintegration initiative, they highlighted that prison presented cultural, institutional, and technological challenges [67]. For example, researchers were unable to bring recording devices into the prison (and so needed to transcribe workshops by hand); they were directed by prison staf not to be 'too familiar' while building rapport with participants; and prison policy prevented them from trialling prototypes.…”

Section: Designing For and Within Sensitive Contextsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design considerations for a digital service to support prison leavers

Grierson

Varghese

Bolton

et al. 2022

Designing Interactive Systems Conference

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People leaving prison experience signifcant challenges upon release. Due to limited funding, only a small proportion of prison leavers receive specialist reintegration support to help them return to the community. Those who receive support have better outcomes across a range of domains and are less likely to be reincarcerated. This study sought to understand how digital services, such as smartphone-based applications, can provide a low-cost, scalable option to extend reintegration support to a broader cohort. To ascertain this, interviews and workshops were conducted with people with lived experience of prison, program staf from a leading community service organisation (CSO) that provides reintegration services, and policy and operational staf from an Australian state's Department of Justice (DOJ). It was found that digital services have the potential to help prison leavers fnd and access relevant services, coordinate their own support, and establish supportive peer networks. This paper outlines the critical design considerations that such a service should encompass, including that it must recognise the diverse needs of prison leavers and embed self-determination. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → HCI theory, concepts and models; Interaction design theory, concepts and paradigms.

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“…Co-design techniques have also been effectively applied to develop VR simulations and serious games to promote physical activity (Boger et al, 2018;Eisapour et al, 2020) and to enrich user experience in cultural and naturalistic site (Bettelli et al, 2019). Although co-design does not seem to have been applied in the field of virtual simulation of emergencies, it was still used to design virtual training to manage stressful situations, such as training for police forces in the field of close protection (Lukosch et al, 2012), reentry training for incarcerated women (Teng et al, 2019), and alcohol resistance training for adolescents (Lyk et al, 2020). From a methodological point of view, these works are very heterogeneous in both the co-design techniques used and the type of stakeholders who participated in the activities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Regarding the first point, several techniques were applied in the initial stages of requirements collection and/or experience planning, including affinity diagrams (Bettelli et al, 2019), brainstorming (Lukosch et al, 2012;Lyk et al, 2020;Tabbaa et al, 2020), focus group sessions (Boger et al, 2018;Eisapour et al, 2020), and interviews (Lukosch et al, 2012;Teng et al, 2019). Regarding the second point, these activities mainly involved end users (Lukosch et al, 2012;Teng et al, 2019) and/or experts in the specific application domain, for example kinesiologists for applications to promote physical activity (Eisapour et al, 2020) or managers of private security companies to design virtual training for police forces (Lukosch et al, 2012), while only few studies also involved experts in new technologies and HCI (Bettelli et al, 2019;Tabbaa et al, 2020). On the one hand, the codesign activity helped to obtain valuable feedback from experts (Eisapour et al, 2020), and to identify design recommendations for the specific application domain (Boger et al, 2018;Eisapour et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…From a methodological point of view, these works are very heterogeneous in both the co-design techniques used and the type of stakeholders who participated in the activities. Regarding the first point, several techniques were applied in the initial stages of requirements collection and/or experience planning, including affinity diagrams (Bettelli et al, 2019 ), brainstorming (Lukosch et al, 2012 ; Lyk et al, 2020 ; Tabbaa et al, 2020 ), focus group sessions (Boger et al, 2018 ; Eisapour et al, 2020 ), and interviews (Lukosch et al, 2012 ; Teng et al, 2019 ). Regarding the second point, these activities mainly involved end users (Lukosch et al, 2012 ; Teng et al, 2019 ) and/or experts in the specific application domain, for example kinesiologists for applications to promote physical activity (Eisapour et al, 2020 ) or managers of private security companies to design virtual training for police forces (Lukosch et al, 2012 ), while only few studies also involved experts in new technologies and HCI (Bettelli et al, 2019 ; Tabbaa et al, 2020 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Designing “Safer Water.” A Virtual Reality Tool for the Safety and the Psychological Well-Being of Citizens Exposed to the Risk of Natural Disasters

et al. 2021

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Virtual Reality (VR) is a popular technology to recreate reality-like scenarios, including dangerous ones, in a realistic but safe way. Because of this potential, VR based research has been applied in psychology studies to provide training and education about how to behave in emergencies such as fires, earthquakes, floods, or typhoons. All these different virtual scenarios have been built to observe how people react to emergencies, what behaviors they adopted, what level of stress is generated, and finally, how to increase citizens' safety. However, there is still little research that shows how Virtual Environment (VE) should be designed to convey appropriate social and psychological “cues” to participants. In this work, we present the result of a series of co-design sessions aiming to bring experts to collaborate in setting up virtual scenarios to increase the quality of life, safety perception, and risk awareness in people living in the proximity of a river. Floods are one of the most threatening climate events, and because of climate change, they are expected to become even more frequent. These disasters have a devastating impact on communities, increasing anxiety and stress levels in citizens living close to rivers. We involved relevant stakeholders to design “Safer Water,” an immersive, interactive, virtual experience to support citizens in psychologically and behaviorally managing pre and post riverbank breakdown situations. HCI experts, hydrogeological and hydraulic engineers, psychologists, and VEs designers took part in affinity diagram and brainstorming activities. Results show how the adopted method was able to generate suitable virtual scenarios, to highlight and classify relevant design requirements, and to find strategies that could improve the quality of life and psychological well-being in “risk-exposed citizens.” The discussion includes a set of open-access guidelines derived from the co-design activities, to support the design of VE for the purposes discussed in the paper.

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Participatory Design of a Virtual Reality-Based Reentry Training with a Women's Prison

Cited by 23 publications

References 6 publications

Therapeutic virtual reality in prison: Participatory design with incarcerated women

Therapeutic virtual reality in prison: Participatory design with incarcerated women

Design considerations for a digital service to support prison leavers

Designing “Safer Water.” A Virtual Reality Tool for the Safety and the Psychological Well-Being of Citizens Exposed to the Risk of Natural Disasters

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