The goal of this paper is to understand if older adults can participate in remote museum visits with virtual environments, and which design factors would be crucial for remote participation system success. We report on a study with 30 older adult participants, identifying strong and weak points of different designs for remote participation and identifying future design directions. Our results illustrate that different designs can change communication dynamics, exploration and navigation patterns, and we describe the design features that led to this. An interaction-free design was found to be the easiest to use, while virtual environments are perceived as aesthetically appealing. Implications for developers are discussed.
Previous research has investigated the use of technology to
support communication between remote friends or family
members in different contexts: reading books [
Judge et al. [
Some studies [
Our work specifically focuses on remote participation in
museum visits, informed by previous research on social museum
experiences for remote visitors [
With this motivation, our research question is: are older adults able to participate in remote museum visits though virtual environments? As a first step in this direction, we explored dyadic (two member) remote visits to museums, in which one member is in the museum and the older adult is at home. We explore different aspects of a museum visit and analyse whether and how we can (1) design for navigating and “visiting” museums from home, (2) design to strengthen social group awareness, and (3) foster social interactions between people and improve their communication. We aim to understand the design space of interfaces for museum visits for older adults (specifically focusing on tablets) and to assess the respective suitability for remote participation in terms of ability to understand, follow and engage in virtual visits.
In order to answer our research question, we developed three versions of a remote participation system with different levels of complexity and examined the following three hypothesis (for each of the prototypes): H1 Participants are able to understand the presented museum content H2 Participants are able to follow the virtual museum tour H3 Participants are able to engage in contextual conversation around presented exhibits
We took into account the difficulties in adopting and using
new technologies by older adults identified with prior trials
of the software [
We presented our participants three interfaces: • Interaction-free, guided tour (F): the participant is led by the onsite member in the visit, using a book visual metaphor; • Interactive, guided tour (I): the participant either follows the onsite visitor or explores the content on her own, using a book visual metaphor; and • Interactive, virtual reality tour (V): the participant freely navigates in a 3D museum using the 3D Gallery app1, a free app for iPad that provides a small set of simple movements for exploring 3D galleries.
To study a realistic museum setting, a museum that our participants would actually visit, we created a small museum of old crafts. The exhibition covered extinct crafts from the previous century, a topic suggested by a phycologist working in a care home as interesting for the participants. The materials for the museum were carefully selected with the help of the phycologist. 1http://goo.gl/dVNjej
We recruited 30 older adult participants for this study: 16 in a care home (CH) and 14 participants in a daily centre (DC). The participants were 4 men and 26 women whose age range was 70-93. The participants reported no prior use of technology, with only few participants reporting use of cell phones for communication with their relatives. Almost all of them had a high school degree as the highest level of education, except for one participant that held a Bachelor’s degree. The DC group consisted of mostly healthy participants: 2 people reported hearing problems and 1 participant sight problems. The CH group consisted of frail adults: 12 out of 16 had mobility problems, and 1 had hearing problems. For the CH participants we also got results from their Folstein test, a 30point questionnaire that is used to screen for cognitive impairment: three of our participants scored below 24, which classifies them as people with moderate cognitive impairment.
We performed a within-subjects design, where the same subjects were presented with all of the three interfaces. The order of presentation of the interfaces was randomized. For each participant, we conducted a field visit (from 30 to 45 mins each). The study was conducted in the natural household of the participant (the care home or daily centre respectively). Each field session was conducted by two researchers, one onsite and one remote. The onsite researcher introduced the purpose of the visit and explained the designs and the interaction gestures (for the interactive interfaces). For the interactionfree and interactive design, the position of the remote collaborator could be understood from the position of a photo bookmark in the book (the photo bookmark indicates the position of the guide, if the guide is ahead, the bookmark is on the left page of the book, if the guide is behind, the bookmark is on the right page); the virtual tour design allowed its users to freely “walk” inside the museum.
Of the 30 participants, 2 preferred not to use the virtual tour design due to sight problems, and 4 did not wish to complete the questionnaire part of the study. The personal opinions of the participants were discussed with a semi-structured interviews at the end of the session. We asked them to discuss the problems that they encountered and to share their opinions about the visit.
We used a pre-defined observation list for each design and a questionnaire after the use of all interfaces. For each hypothesis we collected the following information, in order to assess them.
H1: We wanted to understand if participants were indeed understanding the presented material, or whether they were just blindly participating in the experiment without actually understanding the purpose of it. Some minutes after the beginnings of the experiment, the remote collaborator therefore asked participants to name the presented craft and the onsite collaborator carefully marked the participants’ answers. This task did not require them to remember the name of the piece (a) Are people able to name crafts correctly? (b) Are people able to find the position of the guide? (c) Are people able to follow the guide? (d) Are people able to engage in contextual conversation t n u o C of artwork, but to name the artwork that is observed at the moment.
H2: In order to understand whether participants were able to properly follow the tour, after 15 minutes of free exploration the remote collaborator asked the participants to reach his position in the museum; the onsite collaborator observed the performed action. Next, the remote collaborator moved to another position, asking the participant to follow him (“walk” with him). The performed action was again carefully marked by the onsite collaborator.
H3: We observed if participants engaged in contextual conversations by observing whether they used the available audio channel or not for discussions around exhibits.
Findings are organised according to our three hypotheses outlined before.
We accept this hypothesis for the three designs: the results showed that 25 participants in the interaction-free design, 24 in the interactive guided tour, and 22 in the virtual tour, were able to name the craft that they are seeing, answering upon the questions of the remote collaborator about the presented craft (Figure 1(a)). There was no statistically significant difference between the different designs in terms of understanding the tour as determined by a one-way ANOVA (F(2,87) = 0.46, p = 0.63)
For the interaction-free design we accept the hypothesis, since participants were able to name the craft correctly (H1) and did not have to interact with the system to follow the guide. For the interactive guided tour, we reject the hypothesis, although we note that participants had a partial success in achieving it: 15 participants were able to find the position of the collaborator (Figure 1(b)), however only 14 were able to follow, out of 30 (Figure 1(c)). This design presented some difficulties: participants understood that they should move forward, but did not understand how many pages to go ahead in order to arrive to the position of the collaborator. The observed difficulties appeared mainly in the group of participants coming from the care home, which was characterized by a higher cognitive decline.
The virtual reality visit presented even more difficulties, and we reject the hypothesis: only 3 participants were able to find the position of the collaborator and to actually follow him in the visit (Figure 1(b) and (c)). Additional t-tests confirm a statistically significant advantage for the interactive tour for the task of finding the position of the collaborator (t(58) = 3.69, p < 0.01) as well as for the task of following the collaborator in the visit (t(58) = 3.39, p < 0.01).
The hypothesis is accepted across the three designs, with the virtual reality visit having a slightly smaller number of people engaging in contextual conversation due to 3D navigation problems. Once assisted by the collaborator, the participants engaged further in discussing the objects (Figure 1(d)). The one-way ANOVA analysis shows that there was no statistically significant difference in engagement between the different interfaces (F(2,87) = 0.55, p = 0.57).
Most of our participants found the presented content interesting, they were really happy to speak about the old crafts, especially for the ones they were familiar with. Typically, an exploration of an exhibit started by highlighting what is presented by both the participant and the remote researcher, contributing information about the exhibit such as a description of the craft presented or information related to the exhibit (for instance where the photo was taken). The initiator of the conversation was mainly the participant, reacting to the recognition of the presented content, for instance: “Ah, my brother in law used to be a shoemaker”. Some of the participants were craftsman in the past and they also shared personal emotional stories with the remote collaborator. Content associated with their past resulted in vivid, and sometimes funny conversations. We observed that an affective and emotional rather than a scholar approach to the content was creating stronger impressions in our participants. Fiorenza, 84-years old female participant, commented: “I used to be a tailor, this experiment was a really nice reminder, a great initiative.” The post-use questionnaire results pointed to several important considerations for design of interfaces for remote visiting systems and leisure technologies in general.
First, most users liked the audio channel. People particularly liked the guided tours, we understood that visiting museums in a company was a strong social motivator. In the post-use questionnaire we asked our participants specifically whether they preferred reading on their own or to follow another person in the visit. Almost half of the participants preferred to follow another person in the visit, 10 preferred a mix of both, but none of them preferred to visit alone. Given that the older adults are often alone in the daily setting, we identify a good potential for engagement and active participation in remote companionship with beloved ones to increase their participation and satisfaction.
Second, older adults aesthetically preferred 3D environments (they ranked the virtual reality tour highest for its aesthetic appeal), although almost no participant could actually use it. It is in line with existing literature that says that older adults are usually not good 3D consumers, they may feel disoriented and may not be able to navigate. This comes at no surprise, taking into consideration that it’s difficult that virtual reality environments can guarantee easy to use interaction for every user, irrespective of technological skills.
Third, interaction-free designs worked better than interactive designs, especially for novel users. In the post-use questionnaire the interaction-free design got the highest votes for being easiest to use (the highest number of first ranks). We understood that when dealing with older adults, especially for our participants that had never used a computer before, issues of usability were going beyond making the system easy to use. Our participants were learning how to use our application while simultaneously understanding what an iPad is and how to use it.
While we believe our research provides valuable directions for the design of remote visiting systems, we also acknowledge its limitations. Cultural differences play an important role in research like this. Our participants were located in Italy; practices regarding communication with family and museum visiting vary greatly across cultures. Further research with people from other cultural backgrounds may expose additional aspects related to how people co-participate from remote. Additional limitation of our study is that the guide was a researcher, not a family member; further studies where participants interact with family members will be necessary to validate the generalizability of our results to the family context.
Our study clearly shows that participating in museum visits from remote is cumbersome to older adults and comes with several challenges, yet it’s feasible. Participants’ positive reaction to the idea, and especially on the social aspect, suggests that the social context should be a first aspect to focus on when designing more engaging experiences for older adults from remote. The interaction-free paradigm was found the most suitable interaction paradigm, the virtual reality tour design the most aesthetically appealing. While all participants were able to understand the tours in our experimental setting, we will next study the performance in an actual museum visit (adding complexity also to the guide in the museum). In our future work we will also explore additional mechanisms to design for curiosity and exploration.
We thank the care home “Tobliners” in Malcesine, Italy, the daily center for older adults “Centro Verde” (cooperative Sad) in Trento, Italy, as well as Olimpia Casciata, Davide Simonini and Juan Jara who helped us with this study. The work has been partially sponsored by the TrentoRise project PerTe. This work was also partly supported by the project “Evaluation and enhancement of social, economic and emotional wellbeing of older adult” under the agreement no. 14.Z50.310029, Tomsk Polytechnic University.