Age-differentiated design of immersive virtual enviroments

Given the increasing technologization of our society and demographic change, the age-differentiated design of technical systems is a current challenge in the field of HCI. The technical advances of recent years have led to a broader availability of immersive virtual reality technology, such as head-mounted displays, on consumer level. Previous research often lies its focus on designing and evaluating the quality of these VR environments, using immersion and especially presence as measures. This research proposal defines the concepts of immersion and presence, identifies adequate measurement instruments, and outlines the current state of research on presence in immersive virtual reality. Important variables related to presence are highlighted. Furthermore, a literature review reveals that the empirical findings are almost exclusively based on studies with a younger audience, whereas older users are often completely overlooked when designing VR environments. Therefore, the great potential of this technology for older users, e.g., to improve social participation, to perform cognitive and physical training or for entertainment, cannot befully utilized. Accordingly, the aim of this research project is the development of age-differentiated design guidelines based on a systematic, age-differentiated analysis of sense of presence in VR environments. Therefore, design adaptations are systematically varied in empirical studies and their influence on the sense of presence is examined in an age-differentiated approach. The study design follows a two-stage structure. First, data on the age-differentiated influence of the adaptation dimensions on the sense of presence are collected in an explorative study. In a second step, these results are used to formulate hypotheses for subsequent empirical studies. The development of age-differentiated design guidelines is based on the analysis of the empirical studies.