Personalizing empathy training with immersive virtual reality games: Development and user experience study

Immersive virtual reality (IVR) has been successfully applied in various areas of psychology and learning. IVR has also been adapted for empathy training, but previous studies failed to consider various empathy types. We aimed to provide learners with personalized recommendations of empathy training content for different empathy types. Consequently, we presented Robot’s Dream, an IVR game suite providing personalized content based on the learner’s empathy type. We then conducted a mixed-method evaluation with 35 fifth and sixth-grade students who played Robot’s Dream and answered a post-test questionnaire on usability, user experience, and impact. The user study results demonstrated adequate usability and user experience with emotional engagement of the participants. However, the participants gave mixed reactions to realism and discomfort with the IVR hardware. The results also showed high perceived potential for empathy training and raising awareness of empathy. By retrospectively analyzing the development process and the user study results, we presented learned lessons and identified aspects in Robot’s Dream for future improvement. The presented development account of Robot’s Dream and the user study results can be helpful for educators, researchers, and developers interested in personalizing empathy training and other psychological training with IVR games.