This work will be presented at the ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences (IMX) in Stockholm, Sweden, from June 12 to 14, 2024.
Abstract: We present a virtual reality experience designed to raise awareness towards the impact of low-vision conditions on interpersonal interactions in a patient’s social circle. Specifically, we look at age-related macular degeneration (AMD) that results in a scotoma (the loss of central visual field acuity). The visual impairment hinders AMD patients from perceiving facial expressions and gestures, and can bring about awkward interactions, misunderstandings, and feelings of isolation. Using virtual reality technologies, we co-designed an experience composed of four scenes from the life of AMD patients through structured interviews with the patients and orthoptists. The experience takes the perspective of a patient, and throughout the scenarios, provides voiceovers on their feelings, the challenges they face, but also include bits of advice on how helpful people in their social circles have improved their quality of life through considerate actions. A virtual scotoma is designed to follow the gaze of the user wherever they look using the HTC Vive Focus 3 headset with an eye-tracking module. Setting out from a formal definition of awareness, we evaluate our experience on three components of awareness — knowledge, engagement, and empathy — through established questionnaires, continuous measures of gaze and skin conductance, and qualitative feedback. Carrying out a experiment with 29 participants, we found not only that our experience had a positive and strong impact on the awareness of participants towards AMD, but also that the scotoma and events had observable influences on gaze activity and emotions. We believe this work outlines the advantages of immersive technologies for public awareness towards conditions such as AMD, and opens avenues to conducting studies with fine-grained, multimodal analysis of user behaviour for designing more engaging experiences.
Note: The compiled versions of this experience will be released in May 2024
