Peer Mentor Support in Virtual Reality

Enable young adults with mental health experiences to engage with peer mentors in virtual reality

Master thesis (2022)

Authors

T. Bulstra Industrial Design Engineering

Contributors

F. Sleeswijk Visser Design Conceptualization and Communication - IDE (mentor)
H. Verma Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence - IDE (graduation committee member)
Faculty
Industrial Design Engineering, Industrial Design Engineering
Copyright: © 2022 Tijmen Bulstra
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Published Date

24-08-2022

Language

English

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Faculty

Industrial Design Engineering

Abstract

Young adults with Concerns about their mental health issues (YAMHI) seeking support in the Dutch mental health system struggle with long waiting times.
Enliven aims to develop a virtual peer mentor support platform for YAMHIE to bridge these waiting times. This thesis explores the design process and development of a concept with the following design goal:

To Enable young adults with concerns about their mental health issues to engage with a peer mentor through interaction in a virtual reality environment while waiting on the professional health care, with the aim to support them in addressing their problems.

The design process involved participatory design methods like contextmapping, co-design sessions and prototyping. The tools used for prototyping consisted of Minecraft to design the virtual environments, Figma and paper prototypes.
The outcome of this project is:

A design concept:
1) consisting of ten virtual environments that can be used to design a virtual peer mentor support platform.
2) An experiential prototype to demonstrate the intended interactions between YAMHI and peer mentors of some of those environments (6 of the 10)

As an addition on the side:
3) Because the platform does not exist yet, a manual to support the design team to further integrate these environments in their platform has been created.