SelVReflect: A Guided VR Experience Fostering Reflection on Personal Challenges

Reflecting on personal challenges can be difficult. Without encouragement, the reflection process often remains superficial, thus inhibiting deeper understanding and learning from past experiences. To allow people to immerse themselves in and deeply reflect on past challenges, we developed SelVReflect, a VR experience which offers active voice-based guidance and a space to freely express oneself. SelVReflect was developed in an iterative design process (N=5) and evaluated in a user study with N=20 participants. We found that SelVReflect enabled participants to approach their challenge and its (emotional) components from different perspectives and to discover new relationships between these components. By making use of the spatial possibilities in VR, participants developed a better understanding of the situation and of themselves. We contribute empirical evidence of how a guided VR experience can support reflection. We discuss opportunities and design requirements for guided VR experiences that aim to foster deeper reflection.