How Virtual Reality Can Enhance the Life of Older Adults
For seniors, one can imagine several exciting possibilities:
–Sensory enhancement via augmented and cued auditory and visual sensations to compensate for hearing impairment, macular degeneration and other common age-related maladies.For example, imagine being able to light up the road and add digital warning signals and verbal advisories to a headset or a windshield display used by an older driver at night.
–Cognitive enhancement via visual and auditory cues, symbols and reminders. For example, facial-recognition software can remind someone who they are meeting. Household items can be inventoried and tracked, and then a headset or other device can guide someone to them when a verbal request is made.
–Brain training via regularly cued lessons. Imagine brain games that boost both cognition and function by integrating them into real-world activities. For example, a person could take a stroll through the neighborhood following a virtual ball or other image to exercise muscles while simultaneously shaping visuospatial abilities.
–Musculoskeletal and neuromotor enhancement. Programs could tailor gesture control to help someone with arthritis or Parkinson’s disease interact more easily with their environment, while also serving to improve movement, strength and dexterity.
The possibilities are endless for such practical applications, but there are several key considerations when designing and programming for the senior crowd. Headsets must account for age-related changes in visual acuity and hearing loss, and integrate with existing glasses or hearing aides. Non-headset forms of interface such as wearables on arms or wrists or other projection devices could also deliver meaningful images and sounds without obstructing and burdening one’s head and neck. The technology must also consider design conventions that are familiar to older users, such as the haptic and auditory feedback of buttons, knobs and switches.
While the goal for young gamers is to escape into a virtual world, the goal for most seniors is to make the existing world more accessible–to bring services to them that might otherwise be missed. These services have to be seamlessly integrated into daily life without being too distracting, dizzying or excessively complex to access and manage. They must also provide what Altitude’s CEO Dan Ostrower has described as the “richness, emotional relevance and real experiences” of the analog world–a synthesis he labels Integral Reality.
See the full story here: http://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2016/03/21/how-virtual-reality-can-enhance-the-life-of-older-adults/