Me²: Co-designing deepfake encounters with one's child self in XR

Mental-health interventions often rely on imaginary self-dialogues. However, sustaining mental imagery can be a barrier for some people. XR approaches to overcome this often involve complex technical efforts to personalize content, which might hinder clinical adoption. Here, we present Me², a deepfake-enabled XR system that requires only a single childhood photograph to support encounters with one’s younger self: enabling users to verbally and tactilely comfort a hyperrealistic, emotionally expressive child replica, and subsequently switch perspectives to receive that comfort themselves. We report on a co-design process with psychotherapists, a multidisciplinary team, and naive participants, describing emerging technology and study protocols highlighting trade-offs between clinical efficacy and adoption feasibility. The final design incorporates minimal haptic feedback solution and control over emotional expressions, resulting in feelings of embodiment, emotional engagement and increased self-compassion in naïve participants.

Schlagwörter

Fachgebiet (DDC)

700 - Künste und Unterhaltung
610 - Medizin und Gesundheit

Projekt

Veranstaltung

CHI EA '26: Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Startdatum der Ausstellung

Enddatum der Ausstellung

Startdatum der Konferenz

13.04.2026

Enddatum der Konferenz

17.04.2026

Datum der letzten Prüfung

ISBN

979-8-4007-2281-3

ISSN

Sprache

Englisch

Während FHNW Zugehörigkeit erstellt

Ja

Zukunftsfelder FHNW

Publikationsstatus

Veröffentlicht

Begutachtung

Keine Begutachtung

Open Access-Status

Gold

Lizenz

Zitation

Frund, R. L., Zybinska, P., Wiesendanger, J., Brandenberger, D., Márquez Segura, E., Rühlmann, C., Kivelitz, L., Kleim, B., Lenggenhager, B., & Roel Lesur, M. (2026). Me²: Co-designing deepfake encounters with one’s child self in XR. CHI EA ’26: Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1145/3772363.3799394

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