Virtual Reality (VR) training games have many potential benefits for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) therapy, such as increasing motivation and improving the abilities of performing daily living activities. Persons with ASD often have deficits in hand-eye coordination, which makes many activities of daily living difficult. A VR game that trains hand-eye coordination could help users with ASD improve their quality of life. Moreover, incorporating users’ interests into the game could be a good way to build a motivating game for users with ASD.
I developed a Customizable Virtual Human (CVH) which enables users with ASD to easily customize the appearance of a virtual human and then interact with the CVH in a 3D task. Specifically, we investigated the effects of CVHs with a VR hand-eye coordination training game – Imagination Soccer – and conducted a user study on adolescents with high functioning ASD.