Co-designing a Preliminary Repository of Augmented Reality Concepts for Real-Time Emotion Regulation
Augmented Reality (AR) can be a positive therapeutic approach to support mental health and emotion regulation. Although AR techniques for therapeutic support exist, there is no user-centered, expert-informed understanding of how real-time AR designs can support people in emotional distress without disengaging them from their ongoing activities. This lack of reusable design resources hinders the adoption of AR for mental health support. This paper addresses this gap by introducing a co-designed collection of AR interventions describing how this technique can support real-time emotion regulation. The repository was created following a two-phase participatory design process. Phase 1 recruited 40 anxiety-prone individuals and used the Nominal Group Technique to list ideas on how AR affordances could support emotion regulation. Phase 2 recruited 10 mental health professionals to organize these ideas into thematic clusters and assess their clinical feasibility. The resulting AR design repository, grounded in user perspective and clinical expertise, identifies eight thematic clusters and 106 design ideas. This work represents a first step towards the development of seamless real-time AR interventions for mental health.