UC Santa Cruz

This is a therapeutic VR application, which allows the user to make an emotional journal of daily life while being placed in a relaxing natural scene with an empathetic chatbot. The users can interact with the chatbot through Speech-To-Text input while modifying, clearing, and sending the message using a controller with a simple action. The project is evaluated with log data, including user action records and conversation data, pre-survey and post-survey. The surveys include background information, mood improvement, application experience, and other feedback. There are related works focused on empathetic chatbots, while none of them is using a VR environment to conduct. After completed the study with 11 participants, the results showed the application could bring significant mood improvement.