Trauma-Informed Spaces
Understand the principles of trauma-informed care, and how they can be integrated into physical spaces, through an immersive virtual reality experience.
In the Trauma-Informed Spaces app, you can explore a virtual human services clinic from the perspective of a client seeking care.
You will experience how environmental factors — including lighting, signage, seating and accessibility — affect your clients and learn how changes can improve their experiences and treatment outcomes. Whether you are a social worker, doctor, nurse, teacher or another professional working in health care or human services, Trauma-Informed Spaces will help you improve the quality of care for your clients.
Download Trauma-Informed Spaces
Trauma Informed Spaces is a virtual reality simulation that will allow you to explore a human services agency and see how trauma-informed principles can be integrated into the physical setting of an agency to improve the experience for visiting patients and the people who work there.
As you move through the simulation, there are 11 interaction points where you will be able to see what an office might look like with low, moderate and high integration of trauma-informed principles. We estimate it will take about 30-50 minutes to complete the simulation, depending on how many times you review the content at each interaction point.
Video: Step through our virtual mental health clinic before downloading the app [2:57].
Developed by
Funding from
State University of New York: Innovative Instruction Technology Grant
Published research
Journal of Technology in Human Services: Development of an Immersive Virtual Reality Learning Environment: Integrating Trauma-Informed Principles into Human Service Agency Settings
Provide feedback
Thank you for your interest in this project! If you have used Trauma-Informed Spaces on any platform, we would love to hear about your experience. Your feedback will allow us to improve future versions and address any issues our users encounter.
Meet the team
- Louanne Bakk, clinical associate professor and DSW program director, University at Buffalo School of Social Work
- Kristin Heffernan, professor and co-chair, BSW program, SUNY Brockport
- Samantha Koury, co-director, Institute on Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care, UB School of Social Work
- Mickey Sperlich, associate professor, UB School of Social Work
- Steven Sturman, instructional designer, UB School of Social Work
- Workinman Interactive, application developer
Privacy policy
Trauma-Informed Spaces was developed by the University at Buffalo School of Social Work, the school’s Institute on Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care and SUNY Brockport’s Department of Social Work.
The Trauma-Informed Spaces app does not collect any user data or share any data with third parties. The app does require use of the mobile device camera to navigate the virtual office space. It does not record any audio, images or video.
If you have questions about the apps privacy policy please contact: sw_vr@buffalo.edu.