Conversational Virtual Characters for Improving Social Experiences in Collaborative Games
Social relationships with friends and family are vital to adolescents’ well-being. However, extended or frequent medical isolation can disrupt these connections, and a lack of in-person social interactions for an extended period could lead to loneliness, depression, and even the development of social anxiety. While some adolescents with lived experiences of significant illnesses cope well with socialising, others struggle due to factors such as negative self-perceptions related to physical appearance changes from treatments and self-stigmatisation, often resulting in avoidance of social situations. Therefore, it is important to design digital interventions that facilitate in-person-like social interactions for adolescents who are missing in-person connections, while also providing additional support for those who need help with socialising with friends. “Social Buddy” is a social virtual reality-based application developed as an intervention, incorporating a conversational virtual character to act as a social lubricant within a collaborative game setting. VR technology provides the ability to interact with each other using natural interaction behaviours, mirroring face-to-face communication dynamics. Conversational virtual characters serve as intermediaries, enhancing players' socialising experiences through collaborative gameplay while encouraging them to socially interact in Social VR space via the collaboration gameplay.
U. B. H. Udapola, "[DC] Gamified VR for Socially Isolated Adolescents with Significant Illness," 2022 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW), Christchurch, New Zealand, 2022, pp. 924-925, doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/VRW55335.2022.00313.
Udapola Balage Hansi Shashiprabha Udapola. 2022. Social VR for Socially Isolated Adolescents with Significant Illnesses. In Companion Proceedings of the 2022 Conference on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces (ISS '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 50–53. https://doi.org/10.1145/3532104.3571466.
Udapola Balage Hansi Shashiprabha Udapola. 2023. Promoting Social Interactions via Collaboration with Conversational Virtual Agent in an Immersed Virtual Space for Socially Isolated Adolescents. In Proceedings of the 35th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference (OzCHI '23).
Posters and Demos:
Digital Health Showcase at our Kelburn Campus in Wellington (2023)
Research Showcase: Poster Presentation at Faculty of Health, Victoria University of Wellington (2022)
