Portable Silent Room: Exploring VR Design for Anxiety and Emotion Regulation for Neurodivergent Women and Non-Binary Individuals

2025-08-25

AI Summary

Neurodivergent women and non-binary individuals frequently experience severe emotional dysregulation and anxiety due to societal pressures, sensory overload, and intersectional gender-neurodiversity discrimination. To address these challenges, this study introduces the “Portable Quiet Room”—an adaptive, inclusive virtual reality (VR) relaxation environment explicitly designed to support sensory modulation, mitigate cybersickness, and accommodate gendered neurodivergent needs. Employing a mixed-methods approach—including online surveys, co-design creative workshops, and iterative prototype testing—we refined the system based on feedback from 25 neurodivergent participants. Results demonstrate that the VR intervention significantly enhances emotion regulation, effectively reduces anxiety and sensory overload, and exhibits high accessibility and real-world applicability. Its core contribution lies in being the first VR-based emotional intervention to systematically integrate an intersectional framework into design, thereby advancing neuroinclusive human–computer interaction paradigms.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Game Design — Virtual Humans, NPCs and Autonomous Characters
• Computer Vision: Bias, Fairness & Privacy
• Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor Fusion

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Virtualization and resource management in Web systems and infrastructures
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User privacy protection in personalized systems

Abstract

Neurodivergent individuals, particularly those with Autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), frequently experience anxiety, panic attacks, meltdowns, and emotional dysregulation due to societal pressures and inadequate accommodations. These challenges are especially pronounced for neurodivergent women and non-binary individuals navigating intersecting barriers of neurological differences and gender expectations. This research investigates virtual reality (VR) as a portable safe space for emotional regulation, addressing challenges of sensory overload and motion sickness while enhancing relaxation capabilities. Our mixed-methods approach included an online survey (N=223) and an ideation workshop (N=32), which provided key design elements for creating effective calming VR environments. Based on these findings, we developed and iteratively tested VR prototypes with neurodivergent women and non-binary participants (N=12), leading to a final version offering enhanced adaptability to individual sensory needs. This final prototype underwent a comprehensive evaluation with 25 neurodivergent participants to assess its effectiveness as a regulatory tool. This research contributes to the development of inclusive, adaptive VR environments that function as personalized "portable silent rooms" offering neurodivergent individuals on-demand access to sensory regulation regardless of physical location.

Problem

• Designing VR safe spaces for neurodivergent women and non-binary individuals
• Addressing sensory overload and emotional dysregulation through virtual environments
• Creating portable VR solutions for on-demand anxiety regulation

Innovation

• VR portable safe space for emotional regulation
• Adaptable VR prototypes for sensory needs
• Inclusive VR environments as portable silent rooms