Virtual Visits, Real Emotions: Designing Social VR Experiences for Imprisoned Fathers and their Children

The imprisonment of parents has severe consequences for their relationship to their children. Thus, ensuring valuable contact between them is crucial for parent's social rehabilitation and children's development and well-being. However, visits are often not child-friendly and lack interaction. We see social VR as a means to address these issues. In this paper, we share findings of a user-centered design process of a virtual reality application that allows imprisoned parents to meet their children. Our pilot study with four dyads of children and imprisoned fathers revealed that both appreciated the virtual visits, felt close to each other, and had a positive emotional experience, although fathers missed physical contact. Children preferred VR's playful and interactive nature compared to regular visits. Our research presents virtual visits as a suitable alternative to ensure valuable social interaction between prisoners and their children and contribute to the potential of immersive virtual social experiences for sensitive use cases.