PROGETTAZIONE DI UN'ESPERIENZA IN REALTÀ VIRTUALE PER IL BENESSERE PSICOFISICO DEGLI STUDENTI UNIVERSITARI

In recent years, the growing prevalence of psychological distress amongst the university population has highlighted the need to develop innovative tools to promote emotional well-being. Anxiety, stress, anger, sadness, boredom and fear are some of the emotional states most frequently reported by students and can significantly affect their quality of life, academic performance and ability to adapt. In this context, Virtual Reality (VR) offers new design oppor- tunities thanks to its ability to create controlled, engaging and multisensory immersive environments. The aim of this thesis is to design and validate immersive VR scenarios in- tended to support emotional regulation in university students. The research integrates contributions from the psychology of emotions, user experience design and evidence-based design. The main theoretical framework is Rus- sell’s Circumplex Model of Emotions, used to classify emotional states ac- cording to valence and level of physiological arousal, and to translate this in- formation into design requirements. The methodological process involved a review of the scientific literature, the administration of a questionnaire to students at the Polytechnic University of Bari, and an interdisciplinary consultation with the University’s Psychologi- cal Counselling Service. The results enabled the identification of three main emotional clusters anxiety/stress/anger, boredom/sadness and fear each characterised by specific regulatory needs. Based on this evidence, three different virtual scenarios were designed and developed in Unity for Meta Quest devices, including guided breathing exercises, mindfulness, repetitive interactions, contemplative experiences, and tasks aimed at strengthening self-efficacy. The final phase of the research involved experimental validation using Design of Experiments (DOE), aimed at assessing the effectiveness of the scenarios in altering perceived emotional states and promoting a reduction in emotional distress. Preliminary results highlight the potential of VR as a complementary tool to university psychological support services, capable of offering accessible, customisable experiences oriented towards mindfulness and emotional self-regulation. This thesis contributes to the debate on the role of design in promoting psychological well-being and proposes an interdisciplinary design model for the development of immersive environments intended for emotional sup- port within a university setting.