The Virtual Reality (VR) Blood Donor Experience
Primary Investigator (PI) Name
Dr. Joy Li
Department
CCSE – Software Engineering and Game Development
Abstract
Building on our recently published pilot study showing that an immersive VR blood-donor experience significantly improved satisfaction (82%) and donation willingness (64%) among young adults while reducing anxiety, this follow-up investigation addresses next-generation challenges revealed during playtesting, particularly the need to detect fluctuations in user awareness, stress, and engagement in real time. Although participants responded positively to interactive and educational scenes such as the arcade and art gallery, varying emotional arousal, occasional disorientation, and cybersickness (41%) highlighted the importance of adaptive systems capable of recognizing a user’s physiological and cognitive state. This study therefore explores how integrating eye-tracking and multimodal physiological sensing can enable consciousness detection, including the automatic inference of attention and awareness levels within immersive donor simulations, to personalize feedback and maintain comfort. Specifically, the research question is: to what extent can real-time eye-tracking metrics (e.g., gaze, fixation, pupil dilation) combined with auxiliary bio signals (EEG, ECG, GSR) accurately classify donor consciousness and stress states during VR immersion? A literature-driven analysis of studies from 2019–2025 was conducted, examining eye-tracking accuracy, sampling rates, and multimodal classification performance. Results indicate that video-oculography systems such as Vive Pro Eye, Tobii, and Varjo achieve spatial precision of 0.5°–1.1° and, when paired with additional physiological channels, can reach recognition accuracies above 85%. These findings underscore the feasibility of embedding consciousness detection into VR donor environments to enable adaptive engagement, improve user safety, and advance anxiety-reducing donor technologies.
Disciplines
Computer Engineering | Public Health
The Virtual Reality (VR) Blood Donor Experience
Building on our recently published pilot study showing that an immersive VR blood-donor experience significantly improved satisfaction (82%) and donation willingness (64%) among young adults while reducing anxiety, this follow-up investigation addresses next-generation challenges revealed during playtesting, particularly the need to detect fluctuations in user awareness, stress, and engagement in real time. Although participants responded positively to interactive and educational scenes such as the arcade and art gallery, varying emotional arousal, occasional disorientation, and cybersickness (41%) highlighted the importance of adaptive systems capable of recognizing a user’s physiological and cognitive state. This study therefore explores how integrating eye-tracking and multimodal physiological sensing can enable consciousness detection, including the automatic inference of attention and awareness levels within immersive donor simulations, to personalize feedback and maintain comfort. Specifically, the research question is: to what extent can real-time eye-tracking metrics (e.g., gaze, fixation, pupil dilation) combined with auxiliary bio signals (EEG, ECG, GSR) accurately classify donor consciousness and stress states during VR immersion? A literature-driven analysis of studies from 2019–2025 was conducted, examining eye-tracking accuracy, sampling rates, and multimodal classification performance. Results indicate that video-oculography systems such as Vive Pro Eye, Tobii, and Varjo achieve spatial precision of 0.5°–1.1° and, when paired with additional physiological channels, can reach recognition accuracies above 85%. These findings underscore the feasibility of embedding consciousness detection into VR donor environments to enable adaptive engagement, improve user safety, and advance anxiety-reducing donor technologies.