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Home
Urban Cognition
MBTA Upzone+
Virtual Vitality
Dogs’ Journey
Boundary of Heterotopia
Heritage Extension
Architecture
Bamboo Dome
Professional Works
About Me
Emotion Relief
Technological Nature in VR Based on EEG Data
[Date]
2022.8- 2022.10
[Location]
Suzhou, China
[Team Member]
Jiafei Zhang, Qilin Wu, Ivy Dou, Mengyun Liu
[Keywords]
Virtual Reality, Biosensor, Photogrammetry, Data Analysis
Nature is considered to have qualities that can potentially relieve human's emotion. People often plagued by the negative emotion impact of overwork and living in cities without being healed by the natural environment.
The definition of "Technological nature" proposed by Kahn (2011), has the similar relieving impact as real nature. This research aims to relieve urban anxiety by creating an experience in technological nature (tech-nature) spaces of abstract Chinese traditional gardens using virtual reality (VR), electroencephalography (EEG), and questionnaires. First, scenes of a classical garden in Soochow were scanned and abstracted to generate digital models in VR. Second, prior tests were conducted using EEG test in VR environment and questionnaires if abstraction has the same relief treatment as the scanned one. Third, we selected the abstracted objects with similar emotion healing effect to the original nature, accomplishing VR scenes.
Finally, the VR scenes were tested to compare the emotion feedback with our prior tests. The user's gradually soothing emotional changes in our final scenes were similar with the prior tests. The test results validate that our design can successfully heal emotions. This combination of EEG tests and questionnaires provide a new approach to relaxation for urban people.
EEG data analysis converts the design research to scenes with reality meaning. All results are standardised to a percentage value and visualized by emotion icon. The percentage score like 80% is an average score of β value and subjective value (both are normalized), which can reflect the effect of design. It has proven to be of more relieving from the step of abstraction, combination, to final scene creation and adjustments.
Research Question I Does EEG data match with subjective evaluation from questionnaires for analysis?
- Take 16 combinations' data as an example, the wave shape composed by each combination's average value of β similar to the wave snape or each combinaton s supiecive score.
- The subjective scores can validate the objective EEG data to some extent.
Research Question II Is the effectiveness of abstraction similar to original for relieving emotions?
- Both waves show peaks when testee is confronting the object at similar distance, which means a success for similarity exists between abstraction and original.
- The average value shows that abstraction is more relieving for some artificial objects.
Research Question III
Which kind of Combination is more relieving?
- Combination 02,03,12,13 show more relieving expression.
- The more relieving results will be used in the next step of the final scene design.
Research Question IV
Is the final scene effective in relieving people's emotions?
- Take the four main chapters of the final VR navigation scene as examples, their relief extent is above 75%, and even some over 90%.
- The effectiveness of thefinal scene is verified by both EEG data and questionnaire results.
VR Playing: Both α and β waves show a gradual flattening trend, with the average trend showing some increase. The user's gradually soothing emotional changes in our final scenes were consistent with the prior tests.
(Demo Data below: Clips of one tester from a whole testing process.)
The final scene aims at building the technological nature with emotion relief. It is realised by VR space manipulations with panticipants alrected to cross ine tunnel, go through masks, turn around blockings and wander freely.