Putting the value in VR

Abstract

In development, implementation and evaluation of eHealth it is essential to account for stakeholders’ perspectives, opinions and values, which are statements that specify what stakeholders want to achieve or improve via a technology. The use of values enables developers to systematically include stakeholders’ perspectives and the context of use in an eHealth development process. However, there are relatively few papers that explain how to use values in technology development. Consequently, in this paper we show how we formulated values during the multi-method, interdisciplinary and iterative development process of a VR application for a complex setting: forensic mental healthcare. We report the main foundations for these values: the outcomes of an online questionnaire with patients, therapists and other stakeholders (n=146) and interviews with patients and therapists (n=18). We show how a multidisciplinary project team used these qualitative results to formulate and adapt values and create lo-fi prototypes of a VR application. We discuss the importance of a systematic development process with multiple formative evaluations for eHealth and reflect on the role of values within this.