TravelGalleria: Supporting Remembrance and Reflection of Travel Experiences through Digital Storytelling in Virtual Reality

Travel is a powerful yet fleeting experience that can shape personal perspectives and support self-reflection. To recapture the essence of travel, we explored the use of VR as a medium for immersive re-experiencing with an emphasis on storytelling. We developed TravelGalleria, a VR authoring tool that allows users to curate personalized digital galleries. TravelGalleria encourages creative expression, enabling users to use audio narration, annotations, spatially arranged photos, and more to recount their travel stories. A probing user study with TravelGalleria (n = 20) showed promising trends toward emotional resonance and introspective learning. Our findings illustrate how our tool supports users in remembering, reliving, and deriving new insights regarding past experiences, as they were able to reconnect with emotions and themes central to their travels. We discuss these findings in the context of meaningful digital experiences and storytelling in reflective digital practices, highlighting design suggestions and open areas for future research.

• Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in HCI.