Enhancing User Experience in Virtual Reality for Children with Autism: A Significant Review

Virtual reality (VR) has become a promising technology to assist children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD especially in the areas of improving user experience with immersive, adaptive, and interactive environments. Nevertheless, current research is still disjointed in areas with very little synthesis on the effectiveness of VR in enhancing user experience and supporting the various cognitive, behavioural, and sensory requirements of autistic children. This study seeks to thoroughly review and synthesize current developments in VR-based solutions to determine the main methods, assessment plans, and design implications that can enhance user experience in this population. The systematic literature review was based on the PRISMA framework, where an advanced search strategy was implemented in Scopus and IEEE databases with keywords related to autism, user experience, and virtual reality. The identification phase yielded 939 records, followed by a rigorous screening and eligibility process resulting in a final dataset of 29 primary studies published between 2020 and 2025. The results were divided into three broad themes, namely: 1) VR-Based Intervention and Skill Development for Autism which shows how social, cognitive and daily living skills can be improved with the help of an immersive training; 2) Assessment, Evaluation and Multimodal Analytics in VR for Autism which reveals how objective evaluation and personalisation can be achieved with the assistance of behavioural and physiological and AI driven data which can improve the evaluation and personalization; and 3) Design Framework which includes VR system for Autism that focuses on users, ethical consideration and an inclusive system development. Altogether, the review indicates that VR demonstrates substantial potential to improve the user experience of children with autism, especially when it is facilitated through adaptive, data-driven, and inclusive design strategies. However, issues of scalability, long-term efficacy, and standardisation persist, meaning that future studies are required to create strong and user-friendly VR frameworks in this population.