Diane Gromala

• PhD
• Chair at Simon Fraser University

Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) therapy has been explored as an adjunct therapy for the management of acute pain among children and adults for several conditions. Therapeutic approaches have traditionally involved medication and physiotherapy but such approaches are limited over time by their cost and/or side effects. This review seeks to criticall...

Chapter to appear in Fishwick, P. (ed. ) Aesthetic computing, MIT Press, 2004 In the introduction to this volume, Paul Fishwick has defined aesthetic computing as: "the application of the theory and practice of art to computing" (Introduction, xxx). Fishwick contrasts aesthetic computing as a critical practice with computer or digital art, whose go...

For older adults with chronic pain, maintaining social ties can be difficult. Both chronic pain and social isolation compound each other and are associated with poor health outcomes. Our research explores how technology can be used to facilitate communication and support for older adults with chronic pain. We report on preliminary results of field...

Chronic pain is an illness that affects nearly a third of senior citizens. Uncontrolled chronic pain can manifest constantly and/or intermittently, and can disrupt seniors' ability to plan or to maintain synchronous and scheduled contact with others. Such disruptions can expose seniors to stigma from others who do not understand this illness, socia...

Body image/body schema (BIBS) is within the larger realm of embodied cognition. Its interdisciplinary literature can inspire Virtual Reality (VR) researchers and designers to develop novel ideas and provide them with approaches to human perception and experience. In this paper, we introduced six fundamental ideas in designing interactions in VR, de...

Background The growing popularity and affordability of immersive virtual reality (VR), as adjunctive non-pharmacological interventions (NPIs) for chronic pain, has resulted in increasing research, with mixed results of its effectiveness reported. This randomized controlled superiority trial explored the effects of a home-based adjunctive 3D VR NPI...

Chronic pain, a common disease, is a crucial global public health concern. Approximately 20% of the worldwide population is affected by chronic pain, which accounts for 15% to 20% of hospital visits. In Canada, approximately 7.6 million people—or 1 in 5 people—experience chronic pain. Among this population, 60% has either lost their employment or e...

UNSTRUCTURED Chronic pain, a common disease, is a crucial global public health concern. Approximately 20% of the worldwide population is affected by chronic pain, which accounts for 15% to 20% of hospital visits. In Canada, approximately 7.6 million people—or 1 in 5 people—experience chronic pain. Among this population, 60% has either lost their em...

- Used Machine Learning (Topic Modelling using Latent Dirichlet Allocation) to analyse research theme in the field of virtual reality(VR) and pain - Provided guidelines for the design and development of VR based on sensory-perceptual alterations in chronic pain

Non-technical end-users are silent and invisible users of the state-of-the-art explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) technologies. Their demands and requirements for AI explainability are not incorporated into the design and evaluation of XAI techniques, which are developed to explain the rationales of AI decisions to end-users and assist their...

Whether acute or chronic, pain can significantly impact a person’s biopsychosocial quality of life. To better understand the effects of pain on day-to-day life, i.e., the ‘burdens of pain’, our team of researchers and patient-partners developed an online portal using a ‘Citizen Science’ approach that collects information about living with pain from...

The boundaries of existing explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) algorithms are confined to problems grounded in technical users' demand for explainability. This research paradigm disproportionately ignores the larger group of non-technical end users of XAI, who do not have technical knowledge but need explanations in their AI-assisted critical...

Chronic Pain (CP) is prevalent in industrialized countries and stands among the top 10 causes of disability. Given the widespread problems of pharmacological treatments such as opioids, a need to find alternative therapeutic approaches has emerged. Virtual Reality (VR) has shown potential as a non-pharmacological alternative for controlling pain ov...

The ability to explain decisions to its end-users is a necessity to deploy AI as critical decision support. Yet making AI explainable to end-users is a relatively ignored and challenging problem. To bridge the gap, we first identified twelve end-user-friendly explanatory forms that do not require technical knowledge to comprehend, including feature...

Objective To assess the efficacy of a multifaceted counseling intervention at improving physical activity participation and patient outcomes. Methods We recruited people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). In weeks 1–8, the immediate group received education and counseling by a physical therapist, used a Fitbit an...

Background Current guidelines emphasize an active lifestyle in the management of knee osteoarthritis (OA), but up to 90% of patients with OA are inactive. In a previous study, we demonstrated that an 8-week physiotherapist (PT)-led counseling intervention, with the use of a Fitbit, improved step count and quality of life in patients with knee OA, c...

BACKGROUND Current guidelines emphasize an active lifestyle in the management of knee osteoarthritis (OA), but up to 90% of patients with OA are inactive. In a previous study, we demonstrated that an 8-week physiotherapist (PT)-led counseling intervention, with the use of a Fitbit, improved step count and quality of life in patients with knee OA, c...

Background Many researchers have been evaluating how digital media may impact the emotional and perspective taking aspects of empathy in both clinical and nonclinical settings. Despite the growing interest in using virtual reality (VR) and VR games to motivate empathy, few studies have focused on empathy for people who live with chronic pain. Obje...

BACKGROUND Many researchers have been evaluating how digital media may impact the emotional and perspective taking aspects of empathy in both clinical and nonclinical settings. Despite the growing interest in using virtual reality (VR) and VR games to motivate empathy, few studies have focused on empathy for people who live with chronic pain. OBJE...

Arthritis occurs typically in the senior populations which involves stiff and painful joints. The prevalence of arthritis in the U.S. is 20% and in Canada is 15.8% for 4.3 million, and it decreases the patients’ joint movement and physical activity to a severe degree. Even worse, more than half of the patients do not receive any treatment at all. S...

Music plays a crucial role in young children's development. Current research lacks the design of an interactive system for younger children that could generate dynamic music change in response to the children's body movement. In this paper, we present the design of bike as an embodied musical instrument for young children 2-5 years old to improve t...

Objective To compare and contrast the perspectives of patients with arthritis and those of rehabilitation professionals regarding starting and sustaining use of physical activity trackers (PATs). Methods We conducted focus group sessions with patients, physiotherapists, and occupational therapists in Ontario, Alberta, or British Columbia, Canada....

Background: Virtual reality (VR) therapy has been explored as a novel therapeutic approach for numerous health applications, in which three-dimensional virtual environments can be explored in real time. Studies have found positive outcomes for patients using VR for clinical conditions such as anxiety disorders, addictions, phobias, posttraumatic s...

Cybersickness, which is also called Virtual Reality (VR) sickness, poses a significant challenge to the VR user experience. Previous work demonstrated the viability of predicting cybersickness for VR 360 ° videos. Is it possible to automatically predict the level of cybersickness for interactive VR games? In this paper, we present a machine learnin...

We plan to conduct a longitudinal mixed-methods study to evaluate the impact of home-use Virtual Reality (VR) for chronic pain (CP) management with cancer survivors over a six-week period. The participants will play VR games for a minimum of 30 min per day for at least three days per week. Each week, the participants are required to use randomly as...

In the 1990s, when immersive Virtual Reality (VR) was first popular, researchers found it to be an effective intervention in reducing acute pain. Since that time, VR technologies have been used for treating acute pain. Although the exact mechanism is unclear, VR is thought to be an especially effective form of pain distraction. While pain-related v...

Background Being physically active is an essential component of successful self-management for people with inflammatory arthritis; however, the vast majority of patients are inactive. This study aims to determine whether a technology-enabled counselling intervention can improve physical activity participation and patient outcomes. Methods The Effe...

Sisu is a gamified learning application designed to assist school-aged children who are struggling to read. Sisu utilizes readily-available technology to support the child’s self-directed learning at home, with unique elements tied to the learning experience: (1) a spelling game with (2) an empathic agent, and (3) a mini-game. The empathic agent ut...

Persuasive health systems such as wearable trackers and mobile applications can facilitate self-reflection on one’s physical activity. The gamification approach incorporates game design elements with persuasive systems to encourage more physical activity. However, some investigations have shown that using gamification to promote physical activity c...

We provide an integrated view of patients' and clinicians' perspectives on the communication challenges faced when patients present their medical issues to the clinicians. By combining the results of a literature review from both the HCI and medical literature with the results of clinician interviews explicitly about in-clinic communication issues,...

Chronic Pain (CP) has been identified as a complex medical condition, one that is difficult for sufferers to articulate and for others to discern. This may interfere with the ability of a patient's family, friends and healthcare practitioners to understand what it is like to live with CP, or to even believe it exists. A reluctance by or ability of...

Traditionally, healthcare facilities have been designed from a practical standpoint providing efficient spaces for laboratories and increased numbers of rooms to accommodate beds for patients. Such an approach has often led to facilities that "function effectively" but can indirectly create an atmosphere that is stressful, undermining the psycholog...

Pokémon Go is a mobile Augmented Reality (AR) game that blends gameplay with real-life outdoor physical activity. In this game, players locate, catch and interact with virtual creatures called Pokémon. Initial reports and online players’ statistics suggest that Pokémon Go motivates players to go outside and become more active. This paper describes...

In this extended abstract, we discuss the interaction design of AS IF, a serious game that employs embodied interaction in order to facilitate perspective taking. The goal of this game is to offer non-patients an insight into what it may feel like to function with a body that is, at times, disabled or limited because of Chronic Pain. The interactor...

Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) has been shown to work as a non-pharmacological analgesia by distracting patients from their acute pain for short periods of time. However, few researchers have investigated the effectiveness of mobile “Cardboard VR” for chronic pain patients. In this research, the viability of the Cardboard VR was examined by compari...

Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) has been shown to work as a non-pharmacological analgesia by distracting patients from their acute pain for short periods of time. However, few researchers have investigated the effectiveness of mobile “Cardboard VR” for chronic pain patients. In this research, the viability of the Cardboard VR was examined by compari...

Pokémon Go™ allows players to catch and train Pokémon in the wild through a mobile Augmented Reality (AR) game. Numbers of people are willing to be physically active for long periods of time to catch the Pokémons. Further, the medical and public health communities are also curious if this game has triggered more active levels of sustainable Physica...

The inappropriate prescription of antibiotics may cause severe medical outcomes such as antibiotic resistance. To prevent such situations and facilitate appropriate antibiotic prescribing, we designed and developed an asynchronous collaborative visual analytics tool. It visualizes the antibiotics' coverage spectrum that allows users choose the most...

This paper is an account of research collaborations and an interdisciplinary community that is being forged among experts who have few traditions in common, but who bring diverse expertise to the seemingly unreachable ‘moonshot’¹1 The author's work was named one of Google's Solve for-X “moonshot” efforts. Drawing on the massive effort that lead to...

Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) has been shown to work as a non-pharmacological analgesic by enabling cognitive distraction in acute pain patients, including burn patients, dental patients and chemotherapy patients. However, little research literature exists on the effectiveness of VR for chronic pain patients who suffer from longer-term pain. This...

This paper describes a study that aims at finding the difference in levels of immersion between a Cardboard VR and a traditional Head-mounted Display (HMD)––the Oculus Rift DK2.

This paper describes a study that aims at finding the difference in levels of immersion between a Cardboard VR and a traditional Head-mounted Display (HMD)—the Oculus Rift DK2. Three groups of participants—the experimental group for Cardboard VR, and two control groups for Oculus Rift and a Desktop display—played Cryoblast in the same experimental...

Wearable trackers and mobile applications can facilitate self-reflection of doing physical activity. The gamification process incorporates game design elements with persuasive systems in order to encourage more physical activity. However, few gamification strategies have been rigorously evaluated; these investigations showed that using the same gam...

In the 1990s, when immersive Virtual Reality (VR) was first popular, researchers found it to be an effective intervention in reducing acute pain. Since that time, VR technologies have been used for treating acute pain. Although the exact mechanism is unclear, VR is thought to be an especially effective form of pain distraction. While pain-related v...

Persuasive health systems such as wearable trackers and mobile applications can facilitate self-reflection on one's physical activity. The gamification approach incorporates game design elements with persuasive systems in order to encourage more physical activity. However, some investigations have shown that using gamification to promote physical a...

Researchers have shown that immersive Virtual Reality (VR) can serve as an unusually powerful pain control technique. However, research assessing the reported symptoms and negative effects of VR systems indicate that it is important to ascertain if these symptoms arise from the use of particular VR display devices, particularly for users who are de...

This study aims at finding the difference in levels of immersion between a Cardboard VR and a traditional Head-mounted Display (HMD)––the Oculus Rift DK2. Three groups of participants using Cardboard VR, Oculus Rift and a Desktop computer––played Cryoblast, a 3D game, in the same experimental setups. Jennett’s Immersive Experience Questionnaire was...

Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) as a research tool provides numerous opportunities of what one can do and see in a virtual world which is not possible in real world. Being able to fly is an experience that humans have long dreamed of achieving. In this paper, we introduce a VR game where participants can use their body gestures as a Natural User Int...

Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) has been shown to work as a non-pharmacological analgesic by inducing [sic] cognitive distraction in acute pain patients. Researchers have shown that VR games have the potential to distract patients cognitively and function as a type of pain management therapy. In this paper, we introduce the gameplay and design metap...

Motionscapes-the compositions of visual forms in motion- have often been used for the evocation of affects in recent interactive artifacts and environments. While the motionscape aesthetic can be informed by art theory and history, previous empirical work investigating the affective affordances of motionscapes brings new perspectives to the design...

Researchers have shown that immersive Virtual Reality (VR) can serve as an unusually powerful pain control technique. However, research assessing the reported symptoms and negative effects of VR systems indicate that it is important to ascertain if these symptoms arise from the use of particular VR display devices, particularly for users who are de...

Although Virtual Reality (VR) applications have been shown to reduce many forms of acute pain, such research of VR applications and their effects on chronic pain is still at its infancy. In this study, we designed a VR game Cryoslide, and examined its analgesic effect on chronic pain patients, its end users, in a clinical setting. In this randomize...

In this paper, two different types of personal physical activity data visualizations – a Circular Ringmap and a Virtual Pet visualization – are proposed and compared to a widely used commercial approach, the FitBit bar chart. A study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the three visualizations based on participants' task performance and...

Stigma is a common and serious problem for patients who suffer from depression and other mental illnesses. We designed a serious game to address this problem. The game enables player to experience and strive to overcome the disempowering aspects of depression during the journey to recovery. Through the game’s interaction, player may gain a better u...

Wearable trackers and mobile applications can facilitate self-reflection of doing physical activity. The gamification process incorporates game design elements with persuasive systems in order to encourage more physical activities. In this paper, the design of a mobile game, FitPet, is introduced. FitPet is a mobile application that combines ubiqui...

Researchers have proved immersive Virtual Reality (VR) to be an effective method and non-pharmacological analgesic for distracting acute pain and chronic pain, and for reducing anxiety levels. VR has been developed and deployed in pain management contexts in medical settings for dental and medical procedures, as well to manage cancer and burn pain....

Unpredictable spikes in pain intensity can easily interrupt the lives of chronic pain patients. The uncertainty of when these painful experiences will occur inhibits positive communications and collaborations with friends, families or co-workers in daily life. In this paper, the authors explore an affective design space for developing a wearable te...

One in five people in North America experience chronic pain. The primary non-pharmacological approach to treat chronic pain is to ‘manage’ pain by practices like Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Meditation. Previous research shows the potential of mindfulness meditation to help foster patients’ emotional wellbeing and pain self-modulation....

Because the nature of chronic pain is complex, pharmacological analgesics are often not enough to achieve an ideal treatment plan. Virtual Reality (VR) technologies have emerged within medical research in recent years for treating acute pain, and proved to be an effective strategy based on pain distraction. This paper describes a VR system designed...

This paper outlines the intentions and current design behind the production of Mobius Floe, an immersive virtual reality game catered to acute and chronic pain patients. Researchers have shown that immersive virtual reality (VR) can serve as a non-pharmacological analgesic by inducing cognitive distraction in acute pain patients [Hoffman 2000]. Mob...

Over the past two decades, a shift and rethinking has occurred by placing focus on patient-centered care. In 2001, the Institute of Medicine included patient-centered care as 1 of 6 specific aims at improving and bridging the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of care required for patients. However, one area that patient-centered care has faile...

For many digital artists, art is a critical technical practice, a means of critiquing the assumption that technology is a tool to be applied to all social problems. Aesthetic and affective approaches to visualisation by artists and scientists who comprise the Pain Studies Lab are integrated with tools created for patients who live with long-term ch...

The interdisciplinary literature on body image/body schema (BIBS), which is within the larger realm of embodied cognition, can provide HCI practitioners and theorists new ideas of and approaches to human perception and experience. In very brief terms, body image consists of perceptions, attitudes and beliefs pertaining to one’s own body, whereas bo...

This paper introduces a multidisciplinary and interactive approach to self-management of chronic pain using Virtual Reality VR. This approach is meant to reduce the reliance on heavy use of medication and provide a non-pharmacological method for pain management. In addition, the paper discusses additional technologies that deal with issues surround...

Over the past two decades, a shift and rethinking has occurred by placing focus on patient-centered care. In 2001, the Institute of Medicine included patient-centered care as 1 of 6 specific aims at improving and bridging the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of care required for patients. However, one area that patient-centered care has faile...

The definition of health according to the World Health Organization is “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” This definition is aligned with the mission of our interdisciplinary team, the Transforming Pain Research Group, focusing on inventing and reconfiguring multimedia t...

This is a framework drawn for a visualization system named "Gromala's Weather". The system converts chronic pain patients' pain status to a wearable sensor's output and shows different patterns and colors of LED lights, so the co-workers or caregivers of the patients could understand how to cope with the patient's pain status.

This paper introduces a multidisciplinary and interactive approach to self-management of chronic pain using Virtual Reality (VR). This approach is meant to reduce the reliance on heavy use of medication and provide a non-pharmacological method for pain management. In addition, the paper discusses additional technologies that deal with issues surrou...

The assumptions underlying differing approaches to interface design result, in part, on how attention is managed and categorized using theories from media studies. The authors propose the term intraface to refer to biofeedback or other interfaces that are designed to support users who direct their attention inward to inner physiological states. In...

Decision aids are evidence-based tools designed to inform people of the potential benefit and harm of treatment options, clarify their preferences and provide a shared decision-making structure for discussion at a clinic visit. For patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) who are considering methotrexate, we have developed a web-based patient decisi...

Video game developers are enthusiastic about creating novel interaction approaches that yield a better gaming experience; such interactions are usually built with physical and emotional immersion in mind. Technologies such as Wii®, Kinect®, and Playstation Move® focus on the physical movement of play to encourage seamless and natural behaviors duri...

This paper describes Audition, The Game, a Flash-based video game created to explore whether video games could contribute to the study and treatment of speech impediments, in particular, stuttering. A pilot study indicated a relation between speech demands, stress and psychophysiological measures. Further research, particularly, with participants w...

Sonic Cradle is a chamber of complete darkness where users shape a peaceful soundscape using only their respiration. This interactive system was designed to foster a meditative experience by facilitating users' sense of immersion while following a specific attentional pattern characteristic of mindfulness. The goal of Sonic Cradle is twofold: first...

The Meditation Chamber is an immersive virtual environment (VE), initially created to enhance and augment the existing methods of training users how to meditate, and by extension, to realize the benefits from meditation practice, including the reduction of stress, anxiety and pain. Its innovative combination of immersive virtual reality (VR) and bi...

Mount Qaf is an audiovisual performance installation and a spatial/temporal structure which expresses the aesthetic dimensions of Sufism and electronic music culture. The experience combines generative digital art based on animating Persian patterns with eastern architectural motifs including Muqarnas, in syncopation with an ethnic electronic sound...

This paper describes the research work being carried out by the Transforming Pain Research Group -- the only group whose work is entirely focused on the use of immersive VR for chronic pain management. Unlike VR research for acute or short-term pain, which relies on pain "distraction," this research posits a new paradigm for the use of VR. In addit...

For your cvs, hte citation is: Sonic Cradle (project) Names Title: Chronic Pain: Art & Science Collaborations California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI) UCLA September 29 – November 30, 2011

Heterogenesis is an interactive sound and tactile installation consisting of a group of autonomous artificial agents that collectively generate and evolve a soundscape in response to one another and to the presence of human participants. Taking the form of long pillar-like sculptures and forming a rudimentary artificial neural network, the agents r...

This article outlines a research agenda that addresses the question of how contemporary interactive arts practice can evolve new strategies or ways of facilitating the development and representation of subjective experiences that induce an embodied felt sense of the humanmachine co-evolution. To help answer this question, the term symbiogenic has b...

The research program aims to explore and examine the fine balance necessary for maintaining the interplays between technology and the immersant, including identifying qualities that contribute to creating and maintaining a sense of "presence" and "immersion" in an immersive virtual reality (IVR) experience. Building upon and extending previous work...

The Meditation Chamber is an immersive virtual environment (VE), initially created to enhance and augment the existing methods of training users how to meditate, and by extension, to realize the benefits from meditation practice, including the reduction of stress, anxiety and pain. Its innovative combination of immersive virtual reality (VR) and bi...

In the 1990s, several virtual environments (VEs) deemed “immersive” were developed as therapeutic treatments for numerous ailments. These VEs were created using stereoscopic, head-mounted displays (HMDs), trackers and sensors. Several of these virtual environments are currently in use in medical realms and continue to be developed. Research strongl...

In this paper, we have developed a fast and accurate 3-dimensional registration algorithm using surface gradients for motion tracking of Time-Varying Meshes (TVM). Hierarchical skeleton-based mesh decomposition is used to segment each TVM frame into ...

We present a novel interactive system that uses electroencephalographic (EEG) signals obtained from the user as a primary input for navigation through an immersive real-time 3-D visualization of various regions of the human brain. This "NeuroFloat" system is delivered via a head-mounted display (HMD). Our primary goal in developing NeuroFloat was t...

AmputationBox is an interactive art installation that blurs boundaries between virtual, networked and physical worlds. AmputationBox is also simply a box with a hole on the top. Participants can put their hands into the hole. Every object poked into the hole is visually amputated and redisplayed as virtual organism: creeping or flying flesh. The am...

The Meatbook, an interactive art installation, explores the use of a novel tangible interface to provoke a visceral response in the viewer. The Meatbook presents the symbiosis of the mechanical and the organic as it simultaneously juxtaposes the conflicting materiality of these media. Sensors, motors and other mechanics are used to animate the meat...

The idea of immersion research has been explored in various disciplines: Virtual Reality, Interactive Storytelling, Art, etc. However, most researchers focus on constraints of the hardware and software, and are less focused on the conceptual and philosophical implications of immersion and presence. This paper aims to define a certain quality of imm...

The Meditation Chamber is a novel combination of immersive virtual reality (VR) and biofeedback technologies. Its primary goal is to help users lower their stress levels through meditation and muscle relaxation. Its secondary goal is to enable users who have never meditated to gain real-time feedback that allows them to sense when they are indeed l...