A Collaborative Virtual Game to Support Activity and Social Engagement for Older Adults

Many older adults suffer from Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias and have affected cognitive abilities. In general, physical exercise, cognitive stimulation, and social engagement have been found to be beneficial for the physical and mental health of older adults with and without cognitive impairment. In an effort to address these needs, researchers have been developing human-machine interaction (HMI) systems to administer activity-oriented therapies. However, most of these system, while promising, focus on one-on-one interaction with the computer and thus do not support social engagement by involving multiple older adults. In this paper, we present the design and development of a motion-based collaborative virtual environment (CVE) application to support both activity and social engagement. The CVE task is based on a book-sorting activity and has embedded collaborative components to encourage human-human interaction (HHI). The system records quantitative data regarding users’ performance, interaction frequency, and social interaction. A preliminary user study was conducted to validate system usability and test on older adults’ tolerance and acceptance of the motion-based user interface (UI) as well as the CVE task. The results showed the usability of the motion-based UI and system capability to assess HMI and HHI from recorded quantitative data. The results from post-test and analysis of audio files indicated that the system might be potentially useful. More user study and data analysis need to be conducted to further investigate the CVE system.