Towards a Social VR-based Exergame for Elderly Users: An Exploratory Study of Acceptance, Experiences and Design Principles

For many elderly individuals, the aging experience is associated with a lack of social interaction and physical exercise that may negatively affect their health. To address these issues, researchers have designed experiences based on immersive virtual reality (VR) and 2D screen-based exergames. However, very few have studied the use of social VR for elderly, in which users can interact remotely through avatars in a single, shared, immersive virtual environment, using a head-mounted display. Additionally, there is limited research on the experience of elderly in performing interactive activities, especially game-based activities, in social VR. We conducted an exploratory study with 10 elderly people who never experienced VR before, to evaluate an avatar-mediated interaction-based social VR game prototype. Based on a mixed-methods approach, our study presents new insights into the usability, acceptance, and gameplay experience of elderly in a social VR game. Moreover, our study reflects upon design principles that should be considered when developing social VR games for elderly to ensure an engaging and safe user experience. Our results suggest that such games have a potential among the user group. Direct hand manipulation, based on hand tracking for interaction with 3D objects, presented an engaging and intuitive interaction paradigm, and the social game activity in VR was found to be enjoyable.