Cohort 2 student, Mairi Deighan co-designs a Workshop Series focusing on Virtual Reality Applications for Young People with Cancer based at 1 Cathedral Square.
She had this to say about her experience:
‘[There were a] series of 4 workshops with young people (aged 16-25) living with cancer. The young people joined as co-researchers on my PhD project to help design novel VR applications for young people going through cancer treatment. Together, we identified challenges in the oncology pathway and then developed ideas of how VR could be used to overcome some of these challenges. The young people trialled and evaluated VR applications and used featured from their favourite VR experiences to design their own apps.
I ran the co-design workshops as the main study of my PhD. Between workshops I developed prototypes of the young people’s VR ideas and helped them iterate on their designs.
This workshop series forms the main study of my PhD and I plan to publish 2 papers on it. Firstly I will present the ideas and designs of the young people in a medical VR related journal. Then I will publish a second paper reflecting on using co-design as a method of developing VR applications for healthcare. I have also been invited to Vmed (virtual medicine conference) in LA next year to present this work.’