An Environment for the Prosthetic Body

Hybrid Architecture: An Environment for the Prosthetic Body by Georges Teyssot The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, Vol. 11, No. 4, 72-84 (2005)

Drawing from philosophical, literary, artistic and technological sources, this text focuses on the theoretical relations between body and environment. It illustrates the argument by probing into various topics such as: desiring machines, body without organs, organs without body, gymnastic implements, body-building, celibate machines, incorporation, disembodiment, androids, robots, cyborgs, electro-mechanical and electronic apparatuses, spacesuits, wearable computers and augmented reality, the eco-technical spheres and the matrix. In addition, it looks into theories of medical devices that help explain the notion of the prosthetic body. Finally, within the context of theories of tools and cyber-organism, it attempts to rethink design through the terms of contemporary practices of daily life.


Zombie Kit V1, 2007 by Brian Walker

See also the Prosthetic Impulse

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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Impossible things? Negative Capability and the Creative Imagination

I came across an intriguing paper written by Professor Irene McAra-McWilliam, researcher that I admire. She reviews the history and contemporary understanding of the concepts of creativity and the imagination, referring to poetry and visualization to explore the role of the imagination, and to reflect on the concept of creativity.

Excerpt from her paper
I challenge the popular view of the Romantic poet as “mad, bad and dangerous to know”, and propose instead that these artists were committed to the project of understanding the creative imagination and being attentive to its modes of operation. Indeed many of their poems, such as Coleridge’s Kubla Khan (Coleridge, 1996, pp. 229-231), are expressions of their research. The Romantic project can be seen therefore as an attempt to understand the creative imagination through its own operation, and to articulate this in artistic expression. Poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge were interested in how we see the world, and they proposed that the first act of the imagination was perception itself.

Summary offered by the Creativity or conformity conference:

Using examples from art, psychology and science, she illustrates a number of ways in which we have ‘imagined the imagination’. She proposes that education, with its increasing reliance on the jargon and practices of business and bureaucracy, has lost sight of its central role in developing the Keatsian concept of a ‘negative capability’ which is the basis of creativity: Negative capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

This ‘negative capability’ is the ability to deal positively with complexity, paradox, and ambiguity in processes which have uncertain contexts and outcomes. This capacity is increasingly of value in a world in which the contexts and fields of operation of academic disciplines, governments and businesses is expanding. Indeed, industry, whose leaders work within ‘wicked environments’ characterized by increasing complexity and change, is recognizing and rewarding this ability.

Professor McAra-McWilliam proposes that the current educational milieu, with its ‘final vocabularies’ of business and bureaucracy, is placing a relatively higher value on positive capabilities which lend themselves to measurement. Students’ and teachers’ negative capabilities are thereby marginalized or excluded, along with their ways of thinking and making, and their languages of expression.

She suggests that current educational models are driven by inadequate and outdated models of business which focus exclusively on productivity and results while, ironically, industry and management research is increasingly defining negative capability as essential to innovation in uncertain business environments. The presentation concludes by offering some insights into research practice in art and design as a means to reaffirm the role of education in the development of negative capability, and in imagining solutions to ‘impossible things’.

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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Culturally embedded computing and HCI challenges

At Chi 2007 I met with Lucian Leahu, researcher from the culturally embedded computing group at Cornell University. The group researches on affective computing by considering the cultural context in which people are in while interacting with computers.

We analyze, design, build, and evaluate computing devices in cultural context. We analyze the ways in which technologies reflect and perpetuate unconscious cultural assumptions, and design, build, and test new computing devices that reflect alternative possibilities for technology. We are part of a community of critical technical practices [as coined by Phil Agre], or practices that integrate technical system-building with cultural, philosophical, and critical reflection on technical practice. We have a focus on reflective design, or design practices that help both users and designers reflect on their experiences and the role technology plays in those experiences. We work with collaborators in the Affective Presence coalition to develop an approach to affective computing in which the full complexity of human emotions and relationships as experienced by users in central to design (rather than the extent to which computers can understand and process those emotions) (...)

For instance, their ongoing Fear Reflector project aims to support emotional self-reflection of people while they expect to confront their fears. Using a combination of biometry and camera input, it takes pictures of situation in which the user "fears". People are then given the possibility to reflect on these "fear" contexts.

The group had a few papers being presented at Chi 2007. I attended a very impressive talk from their group How HCI Interprets the Probes. They discuss the research techniques of Bill Gaver called Cultural probes that uncover people's values and activities. They discuss how the HCI community craving for flexible design methods adopted and adapted the probes in their research. By Kirsten Boehner, Janet Vertesi, Phoebe Sengers, and Paul Dourish (from Irvine), How HCI Interprets the Probes.
.Pdf of the Paper.
Also a nice interview of Bill Gaver on Designing Interactions for reference.
Another very inspiring take on HCI is to look at Situationist art practice. The authors specify how the Chi community can be relunctant to consider these methods, or by reducing them to comform to Chi's ones instead of using the richness of these methods.
.Pdf of the Chi'07 paper by Lucian Leahu, Phoebe Sengers, Claudia Pederson, Jennifer Thom-Santelli and Pavel Dmitriev.
Of course, nice references on situationism with video and sound recordings of Guy Debord on Ubu. The most famous and studied book-movie of Guy Debord being Society of the Spectacle.

Interact 2007

Prototypes of Moving Pictures

Yessss! The full paper written for Interact 2007 with Dr Hiroshi Ishii is accepted! It shows how Textable Movie designed for facilitating video production has informed Moving Pictures. It presents a mechanism to seamlessly interface the various parts in video production and present our observations. The conference topic is socially-responsible interaction. So see you in Rio de Janeiro in September!

Abstract: The paper presents a novel approach to collecting, editing and performing visual and sound clips in real time. The cumbersome process of capturing and editing becomes fluid in the improvisation of a story, and accessible as a way to create a final movie. It is shown how a graphical interface created for video production informs the design of a tangible environment that provides a spontaneous and collaborative approach to video creation, selection and sequencing. Iterative design process, participatory design sessions and workshop observations with 10-12 year old users from Sweden and Ireland are discussed. The limitations of interfacing video capture, editing and publication in a self-contained platform are addressed.

Download the 14 pages paper

Thank you all of you for your feedback!

video-cards

Children playing with Moving Pictures

Tangible artifacts have been linked to video as a way to support collaborative exploration of a video collection. More recently, Labrune and Mackay designed the TangiCam, a tangible camera made of two cameras on a circular frame to capture both the child and the video of the child. Researchers have worked on token-based access to digital information. See also pioneer research done by Hiroshi Ishii and Brygg Ullmer.

A broad range of interactive table-tops have been designed for collaboration. From Yumiko Tanaka’s Plable, a traditional looking table under which children can build an imaginary world, to the DiamondTouch table that allows the collaboration and coordination of multiple users at the same time, designers developed a new concept for movie editing to help children understand the process of editing. In Moving Pictures, children arrange tokens on a table, guided by a GUI, in order to create and visualize the storyboard of a movie.



Plable

The Plable web site has awesome videos both of the process and the final project.

This interesting concept started to take a more "card shape" with Mika Miyabara and Tatsuo Sugimoto, the Movie cards, a set of printed cards that can be re-arranged in any order. Their bar code is used to identify them on a digital screen. Regine Debatty gives more details about this very interesting project.
Also, TVS explores the manipulation of digital video clips using multiple handheld computers.



Movie Cards

Recently, Dave Merrill and Jeevan Kalanithi created the Siftables, a set of small displays that can be physically manipulated as a group to interact with digital information and media. I bet that these miniature video cards will lead to very interesting projects ...
Paper on the siftables.



The siftables

Philips Design developed Pogo, a system that allows replaying visual sequences using tangible objects with a stationary computer for capturing and associating media to objects. Even though these systems invite capture and editing of the movie segments, they donnot propose the publication of the final movie created and the possibility to share it with peers remotely. For this reason, Moving Pictures integrates a videojockey mode to allow children to perform a final movie as much as inviting them to revisit the movie impact.


Pogo

Allowing authorship as a design principle in most Tangible Interfaces is rare. It is probably due to the fact that it requires a very flexible interface and a software architecture that takes care of data management. This design principle can allow children to become active participants instead of simply observers. In Moving Pictures, tangible media containers can easily be integrated in mobile technology and also be combined for performance using a video jockey platform. Maybe a new version could use the potential of the siftables ;)

An history on interactive design

Etienne Mineur was my graphic design professor at Paris VIII, now he is swimming in praise!

He just finished the interactive graphic piece for Issey Miyake and now he is about to travel around the world with his family to document on graphic designers, game designers, fashion designers. His focus will be Asia, so if you are extremely talented in design, live in Asia, and willing to spend some time with French people, you should contact him.



He regularly presents an history on interactive design. The last one was for les arts deco de Paris, l'ENSAD. I think he should be in this presentation, but in any case it is a very interesting document that he shares online.
Pdf of the presentation

Upgrade! Boston - Turbulence talk

Jo-Anne Green, Co-Director of Turbulence invited me to give a talk. So April 12th at Art Interactive I will present some of my work. There is a rumor that Dr Yasmine Abbas might also be available to share her latest findings on the neo-nomads.

See you there!

Design and Intuition

Designing interactions book

Few weeks ago, I asked my advisor Hiroshi Ishii to lend me the Designing interactions book from 2007 in which he presents multisensory interaction design. I particularly liked the organization of the book in a form of a small encyclopedia of interviews illustrated by successful examples from the first PC prototypes to the existential design of the RCA interaction design department.
The book can be discovered online with streamed interviews and samples of work.

Video interviews

Video interview of Hiroshi Ishii

Video interview of John Maeda

Today, Hiroshi invited Bill Moggridge, co-founder of IDEO, to talk about "Design and Intuition" at the MIT Media Lab and to introduce his book.

abstract of the talk
Interactive technology is everywhere, seeping into every crack and cranny of our lives. It's not just the mouse that we use for pointing and clicking, plus the desktop and windows on our screens. It's the TV we watch, the iPods that help us enjoy music, video games, digital cameras, phone services, Palmtops, plus the aesthetic, social and cultural interventions that we experience. Bill Moggridge will describe a design process that is common to these examples. He will show how design opportunities can be identified by discovering people's latent needs, behaviors, and desires, and by creating new ways to serve and support them. He will demonstrate how designers can visualize new products, services, spaces, media and software-based interactions, and bring them to life by prototyping. He will discuss the values inherent to Design Thinking and the processes that can help to harness the power of intuition in designing interactions.

bio of Bill Moggridge
Bill Moggridge is cofounder of IDEO, independently ranked by business leaders as one of the most innovative companies in the world. A Royal Designer for Industry, Bill designed the world's first laptop computer. He pioneered interaction design and is one of the first people to integrate human factors into the design of software and hardware. He has been a visiting professor in interaction design at the Royal College of Art in London, lecturer in design at the London Business School and a member of the steering committee for the Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea, Italy. He is currently consulting associate professor in the joint program in design at Stanford University. His book Designing Interactions is available from The MIT Press.

Jean Baudrillard

One of my favorite thinker, Jean Baudrillard, passed away yesterday.

The last book of his I read is l'échange impossible. In the book, Baudrillard confronts our relationship with our contemporary world to its ongoing hyperreality.

My friend Oliver Vaubourg posted a summary of one of Baudrillard's master piece: l'Ecran total. The main point of the book is to consider the repercussions of substituting formerly symbolic oppositions for a generalized culture with a passive consensus.

I just found out that on Turbulence that Ars Virtua will be holding a public tribute to honor the late social and political theorist Jean Baudrillard. Jean Baudrillard's criticisms and view on Simulation are influential to our discussions of the MMO. This short program will be held on the WoW Kilrogg server, 4-5pm PDT, March 17, 2007 near Orgrimmar. Please send tell to Zuluu upon arrival in-world for the location. Too bad my level 62 character is on another server, I will have to go visit with a level 1 ...

Interview in ArtDesignBy

Moving Pictures



An interview for Denis in ArtDesignBy. It is in French only, but I recently presented my work in English for Regine on We-Make-Money-Not-Art.>.


Petite peau de lait

Interview in my favorite blog!

For Valentine's day, Régine Debatty offered me an interview in her super blog!

Via We-Make-Money-Not-Art

Touch · Sensitive Apparel at CHI 2007

Touch·Sensitive is a work-in-progress to develop a series of haptic modules that allow computational massage therapy to be diffused, customized and controlled by people on the move. Our current prototypes succeeded in defining a flexible structure, a mechanism of diffusion, and a feedback system for alerting and comforting the user through haptic means.

Touch · Sensitive Apparel work-in-progress 6 pages paper has been accepted to CHI 2007. Come see Yas and I in Saint Jose from April 28-May 3 2007!

Abstract
Touch·Sensitive is a haptic apparel that allows massage therapy to be diffused, customized and controlled by people while on the move. It provides individuals with a sensory cocoon. Made of modular garments, Touch·Sensitive applies personalized stimuli. We present the design process and a series of low fidelity prototypes that lead us to the Touch·Sensitive Apparel.



Download pdf of the paper

Sensory experiences

Today I watched Signers Koffer by Peter Liechti (1995, 81 min.), a movie on action sculptures made by the Swiss artist Roman Signer. Signer uses common household objects sometimes in addition to his own body to create a combination of explosive, compressed and released sculptures. He plays with compression and expansion such as in a harm stretch that gives a sense of pleasure. He works on the ideal speed. He uses his body in extreme conditions to engage in a personal discussion with nature. He borrows activities that use nature, readapt nature, and destroy nature. He re-instantiates the viewer shock that can happen facing consequences of natural catastrophes, and this within his action sculptures. He collects and revisits specific polish toys, toys that are charged with a period, a sense of magic. He describes their form, their functions in relation to their history and sometimes misery.

I had difficulty finding media about his work online, however a german band called Blumentopf borrowed and recompiled visuals of the movie.
Sequences from the Movie.

The sculptural actions of Roman Signer reminds me of the Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa.

Taking nothing seriously and recognizing our sensations as the only reality we have for certain, we take refuge there, exploring them like large unknown countries. And if we apply ourselves diligently not only to aesthetic contemplation but also to the expression of its methods and results, it's because the poetry or prose we write - devoid of any desire to move anyone else's will or to mould anyone's understandng - is merely like when a reader reads out loud to fully objectify the subjective pleasure of reading.

New product development

Anne Bruseberg and Deana McDonagh-Philp (2001) New product development by eliciting user experience and aspirations International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Volume 55, Number 4, October 2001, pp. 435-452(18)

Abstract Industrial design training is embracing the need for designers to elicit user needs in order to support the development of successful new products. This paper highlights the collaboration of an ergonomist and two industrial designers in the development of a range of mainstream domestic consumer products. It documents the experiences gained in applying and adapting focus group techniques to inform the designing process directly, and illustrates how a variety of techniques (e.g. product handling and product personality profiling) can be incorporated to elicit user needs, aspirations and emotions.

Emotional relationship with products

McDonagh D, Bruseberg A, Haslam C. (2002) Visual product evaluation: exploring users' emotional relationships with products. In Appl Ergon. 2002 May;33(3):231-40.

Abstract This paper discusses an industrial designer's approach to eliciting user perceptions and emotional responses to products through visual evaluation and stimuli. Whilst the authors accept that product functionality is crucial for product success, the appearance, use of materials, shape and form provide the most immediate product data for the user. Less tangible issues such as emotional bonding of users with products, cultural perceptions and social value systems, provide valuable insights for the product developer to help expand knowledge and understanding of the users' need beyond the functional. This paper presents product personality profiling as a new technique for design researchers/designers, and discusses it alongside other emerging approaches such as mood boards and visual product evaluation. The authors have used these techniques during focus group sessions with users to elicit individuals' needs and aspirations towards products. Such a user-centred approach is fundamental to applied ergonomics. Experiences, benefits, and limitations of these techniques are outlined as well as the opportunities for further development.

Paper

Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces

A conference that seems to bridge product design methods and HCI. The next one happens in Finland, Helsinki.
Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces 2007, August 22 - 25, University of Art and Design Helsinki, Finland.

Description UE+/User Experience Plus

"User Experience" has become a key word in design over the last decade. It articulated disappointment with usability research in the 1990s, bringing to the fore designers traditional skill, an ability to create products and interfaces that are a joy to use and, at best, exciting. In many ways, the concept has been successful. It has become a cornerstone in many leading design programs all over the world. It has generated theoretical discussion. It has rejuvenated philosophical debate in design research. It has found a home not just in research, but also in design education.
However, as all concepts, this notion has been gathering dust over the years. Designers and researchers in many parts of the world have been going beyond user experience. While taking the lesson from what has been learned, they prefer to use more specific concepts, including concepts such like affective interaction, rich interaction, and co-experience.
Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces 2007 will welcome contributions that explore these developments. It encourages:
Conceptual contributions backed up with designs and empirical research.
New innovative research that builds on user experience, but add t it.
Methodological papers and designs that extend user experience research.
Theoretical reflections.

List of sessions
Session I: My Fingertip's Just 1 Bit of Me! Enriching Product Interaction through Skilled Actions
Session II: Luxury in User Experience: Designing and Consuming New Luxury
Session III: The Aesthetics of Interaction
Session IV: Imagined Qualities of Products as Constituents of Experience
Session V: Things that Come Between Us: Social Interaction as Design Material

Interaction design from product design

In Sept. 2006, I referred to the work of Tom Djajadiningrat. Tom Djajadiningrat is both industrial designer and researcher. He works on interaction design and considers product design methods.


Figure extracted from the paper on Rich Interaction: issues.

I selected two other papers of his that look at interaction design from a product design point of view.

Frens, J.W., Djajadiningrat, J.P., & Overbeeke, C.J. (2004). Rich Interaction: issues. EUSAI2004, pp.271-278.

Abstrat The topic of this paper is rich interaction. Rich interaction borrows from tangible interaction and the concept of affordances. This is achieved through integral design of form, interaction and function of products. It is applied to interactive consumer products. A digital camera with a rich user interface (RUI) was designed and compared in a user study to a digital camera with a more conventional user interface. Several issues concerning rich interfaces are discussed.

Link

Wensveen, S.A.G., Overbeeke, C.J., Djajadiningrat, J.P., & Kyffin, S.H.M. (2004). Freedom of fun, freedom of interaction. Interactions Magazine, september + october, pp.59-61.

Introduction The modernist tradition still drives our society and our scientific endeavors. Modernity stood for technology push, progress through industry, linearity, money, the abstract, and the logical. But it has resulted in a feeling of uneasiness, even coldness. That is why, we think, there is now such a drive to get human and societal values back in the equation: Think of human-centered engineering, the experience economy, funology, and the like. In this article we give an exam- ple of the direction interaction-design research might take. We describe an approach that exploits all human skills, including perceptual-motor and emotional skills. We then reflect on the question of why industry has been slow to adopt this approach.

Link

A guide to evaluate Universal Design performance

I found a guide to evaluate the universal design performance of products.
Evaluating the Universal Design Performance of Products, EUDPP, Molly Story, James Mueller, and M. Montoya-Weiss, 2002 from the Center for Universal Design.

Paper in .pdf format

Their definition of universal design

Universal design is the design of all products and environments to be usable by everyone regardless of age, ability or situation. Achieving usability by people of all ages, abilities, and situations is very difficult, but it is a goal well worth striving for. As universal design performance is increased, so are usability, safety and marketability for all users.

In sum, the 6 principles of universal design are:
1. Equitable Use
2. Flexibility in Use
3. Simple and Intuitive Use
4. Perceptible Information
5. Tolerance for Error
6. Low Physical Effort
7. Size and Space for Approach and Use

The Universal Design Performance Measures are not intended to be used as a “scoring” device, nor as a substitute for real-world testing by individuals with personal experience of aging or disability. Product developers with some knowledge of the issues involved in aging and disability will find this tool helpful in:
• Evaluating product usability throughout its life cycle: packaging, instructions, set-up, use, maintenance, and disposal;
• Developing product testing and focus group methodologies for use with individuals of diverse ages and abilities;
• Promoting the universal design features of products to potential customers;
• Identifying universal design features of products for design competitions and award programs.

Sleep disorders interventions through technology mediated environment

Exploring the synthesis of temperature deployed through haptic systems, I have found that researchers have previously considered the effects of an electric blanket on sleep stages and body temperature in young healthy men. They conclude that use of a temperature-controlled electric blankets under low ambient temperature may decrease cold stress to support sleep stability and thermoregulation during sleep.

Reference of the paper
Okamoto-Mizuno, Kazue; Tsuzuki, Kazuyo; Ohshiro, Yasushi; Mizuno, Koh (2005) Effects of an electric blanket on sleep stages and body temperature in young men. Ergonomics, Vol. 48 Issue 7, p749.

Based on research on seasonal affective disorders (SAD), designers have also created bedding that synchronizes the body clock. It is a poetic and transparent manner to support patients with seasonal affective disorder in which the insufficience of day-light causes the onset of depression. Designers have also created the SRE - Sleep & Recovery Enhancer. The SRE guide the user through autogenous exercises to lower the stress-level and reduce time to fall asleep.

Virtual Reality and mental health applications

Working on haptics for psychotherapy, I found interesting the past work on Virtual Reality for psychotherapy.

There is a lot of systems being developped for therapy, especially phobic disorders for instance when it involves panic disorders associated with acrophobia. The basic idea is to provide the patient with a virtual scenario where he/she can feel a sense height. The results of the studies proved that VR environments are effective and realistic at overcoming acrophobia

[Virtual environments for treating the fear of heights (1995) by Hodges, L.F. Kooper, R. Meyer, T.C. Rothbaum, B.O. Opdyke, D. de Graaff, J.J. Williford, J.S. North, The development of virtual reality therapy (VRT) system for the treatment of acrophobia and therapeutic case (2002) by Jang, D.P. Ku, J.H. Choi, Y.H. Wiederhold, B.K. Nam, S.W. Kim, I.Y. Kim, S.I. ].

More specifically related to neuropsychology, Dorothy Strickland has used Virtual reality for the treatment of autism. She also tested her system with children with attention deficit disorders. She concludes that because autism and attention disorders involve abnormal stimulus response to the external world, Virtual reality offers the potential to regulate an artificial computer environment to better match the expectations and needs of individuals with these problems.

Reference of her paper Virtual Reality for the Treatment of Autism. By Strickland D. In GIUSEPPE RIVA, BRENDA K. WIEDERHOLD, ENRICO MOLINARI (Eds.), Virtual Environments in Clinical Psychology and Neuroscience 1997, 1998 Los Press: Amsterdam, Netherlands.

I also found a critical paper about basic theoretical and pragmatic issues that need to be considered while designing a VR system in the areas of clinical psychology and neuropsychology. For instance Basic VE Cost/Benefit Issues for Mental Health Applications

1) Can the same objective be accomplished using a simpler approach?
2) How well do the current attributes of a VE fit the needs of the psychological approach
or target?
3) How does a VE approach match the characteristics of the target clinical population?
4) What is the optimal level of presence necessary for the application?
5) Will the target users be able to learn to navigate in and interact with the environment in
an effective manner?
6) What is the potential for side-effects (cybersickness and aftereffects) in light of the
characteristics of different clinical groups?
7) Will assessment results and treatment effects generalize to the “real world”?
8) How should VE studies be designed and how will the data be analyzed?

These questions should be also addressed while designing and testing haptic systems for psychotherapy.

The paper also proposes areas where the immersion component can be crutial:

1. Systems designed to produce active distraction where the goal is to “remove” the
person’s ability to view conditioned (and unconditioned) pain related stimuli
Anticipated pain reduction may also serve to motivate a patient to become “involved” in
this alternative experience, with a higher level of presence resulting.
2. Systems designed to allow comparisons and ratings of full-sized humans for purposes
of assessing and treating body image disturbances, or for other applications that
may require some interaction with virtual “actors”.
3. Systems that target the assessment and rehabilitation of attention processes (as well as
other cognitive domains) whereby HMD fostered immersion would be needed to eliminate
external “distractions” that would intrude on the controlled environment .
4. Systems designed to assess and rehabilitate functional activities where transfer to the
real world is highly valued. An example where a higher level of the sense of presence
may be needed to maximize ecological validity, is when the objective is the assessment
or training of a complex procedurally-based functional skill (i.e., driving ability).
However, it should be noted that non-HMD approaches have shown some success for
this purpose for simple navigation-based activities.

The authors of the paper concludes positively on this work. They particularly states that these considerations for the development of virtual technology is necessary to maximize the potential usefulness of virtual environment for mental health applications. They remark that this is key to consider the standards that should be applied to research-based and clinically-oriented mental health applications.

Reference of the paper Basic issues in the use of virtual environments for mental health applications. By AA Rizzo, M Wiederhold, JG Buckwalter, GIUSEPPE RIVA, BRENDA K. WIEDERHOLD, ENRICO MOLINARI (Eds.), Virtual Environments in Clinical Psychology and Neuroscience 1998, Los Press: Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Later in 2003 another review is published. It presents the state of the art of virtual reality therapy (VRT) in phobic disorders and conclude: Possibilities offered by VR in the field of the cognitive-behavioral therapies are numerous. Immersion, guide by the therapist, leads the patient to live this experiment in a more realistic way. But this “technicization” of the psychotherapy, as attractive as it is, does not modify the theoretical and methodological bases on which VRT rests. VRT has not replaced the role played by therapist. Indeed, his/her presence near to the patient remains essential. It seems that VR reinforces the therapeutic relation between patient and therapist on a collaborative mode.

Replacing the therapist is now the fear of the psychologists ;) but I did not interpret in any of my readings that these VR projects offered a replacement of a therapist. I certainly agree with the conclusion that if we design for the patient, we also design for the therapist. VR and haptic systems could be introduced by therapists for patients to gain both import and control on their own therapy.

Reference of this last paper State of the art of virtual reality therapy (VRT) in phobic disorders. By Stéphane Roy. In PsychNology Journal, 2003, Volume 1, Number 2, 176 - 183.


In Virtual Reality for clinical psychology and neuropsychology