School's Back

Abstract

Social virtual reality (social VR) is an emerging technology that has the potential to support unique social experiences for groups of older adults. In this paper we explore the use of social VR to support group reminiscence, an activity that has been shown to have a positive impact on the lives of older adults. We developed School Days, a bespoke social VR application that enables groups of geographically dispersed older adults to meet in a virtual environment to reminisce about their school experiences. We conducted a user study over the course of 5 months with 16 participants aged 70--81 to evaluate how School Days supported reminiscence. In this paper, we focus on how the use of reminiscence scaffolding features in School Days impacted on the older adults' ability to participate more fully in the reminiscence activities. Our results illustrate the value of social VR for connecting older adults over distance, and contribute new knowledge of how virtual environments can be designed to scaffold reminiscence; how techniques such as 3D conversation starters and individual artefacts can be used to scaffold reminiscence; and how pre-recorded holographic stories (Avacasts) can be used to introduce new perspectives and prompt self-reflection. We contribute five design reflections aimed at guiding the design of future reminiscence tools in social VR.

Avatar-Mediated Communication in Social VR: An In-depth Exploration of Older Adult Interaction in an Emerging Communication Platform

“…This culminated in a workshop where they trialled a basic social VR prototype that allowed them to control embodied avatars via a Microsoft Kinect sensor [3]. In the second cycle, a subset of the same group of participants were involved in the participatory design of a social VR application concept [5] that was used as the basis for the prototype that was developed for the user study [2].…”

“…Participants were seated around a desk at the 'head of the class' while in the environment. The virtual space was also furnished with a range of reminiscence scaffolding features that have been described in prior work [2]. Figure 2 shows participants engaged in conversation in The Classroom.…”

“…The sessions did not have predefined themes or topics for discussion. Instead, participants used features within School Days to generate topics for discussion [2]. These features included 'conversation starters', which were questions generated by pressing a button on the virtual desk (e.g.…”

“…"what school trips and excursions did you take? "); virtual 3D artefacts like photographs or trophies from their youth that participants could pass around the group; and 3D avacasts, which were virtual holograms that played pre-recorded stories from other older adults in the study [2]. Each of these features helped to stimulate conversation and encourage interactions between the participants.…”

“…AMC in social VR also allows users to feel co-present in virtual space, collapsing the physical and psychological distance that is often experienced when using other communication platforms [1]. Lastly, it is possible to design social VR environments that offer rich experiences akin to those people enjoy face-to-face, such as photo sharing [21], or the exchange of objects among virtually co-located users [2].…”