DOI: 10.5255/ukda-sn-857785
title: Designing for Healthy Cognitive Ageing Project: Virtual Reality-informed Design Development and Evaluation Data, 2022-2023

description: The virtual-reality design aimed to produce a home design that would be acceptable to both older people and housing professionals, would provide cognitive, sensory and physical support, and would be deliverable at scale. Participants were recruited through snowball sampling and through advertisement via project partners and collaborators. 

Over three rounds of VR supported co-design workshops, taking place between May 2022, and July 2023, n=94 participants contributed to the iterative design of two VR-based prototype homes designs (the Stirling, a one storey home, and the Dunblane, a two storey home). Participants comprised n=48 housing related professionals (including Architects, builders, housing, and planning managers), and n=46 older people, aged 55 years or more. The complete process involved a total of 13 co-design workshops, comprising an average of 8.6 participants per workshop (range 1 to 12).

The first two rounds of co-design (in work package 3), comprising six workshops, followed the same two-stage format. After an introduction to the project as a group, individual participants experienced the virtual home designs whilst supported on a one-to-one basis by researchers. Most participants from these rounds experienced design immersion using a VR headset. One participant, who was unable to travel, took part from home using a remote VR protocol developed during a previous research project by members of the present team. Two further participants chose to view the designs using a web-based 3D viewer on a tablet computer. Conversations that took place during the workshops were voice recorded, for subsequent analysis. 
Workshop voice recordings totaled over 40 hours of verbal commentary from individuals as they explored the designs, and over 15 hours of audio from conversations with facilitated groups of participants who had experienced the prototype home designs. 
Whilst facilitating the VR experiences, researchers encouraged the participants to provide critique on the designs based on their own needs and preferences. Leading with prompts to the participants about the suitability of each design as a home for their ‘future self’ researchers then used conversational cognitive interview techniques aimed at uncovering the basis of participants' design comments. In many cases, this helped researchers distinguish between the most valuable comments; based on participants' personal needs, preferences, and experiences; versus those based on response bias, othering, or age-related stereotyping. For consistency, the researchers provided similar prompts to all participants, irrespective of their participant status as ‘older person’ or ‘housing professional.’

Immediately following their VR experience, the participants and researchers took part in a loosely structured group conversation, with discussion points covering their VR experience, and the potential role for the method in industry, as well as broader reflections on the prototype designs. 

In the third (final) round (in work package 5), (n=49) participants joined (n=6) group design reviews. At this stage, the group discussions also covered wider issues of scalability of the designs.

Technology and Software
The home designs were modelled in 3d Studio Max, then imported to Unreal Engine where materials, lighting, and user movement parameters were set. This was in turn exported and side loaded onto Meta Oculus 2 VR headsets. Views from each space of both home designs were also exported to web-based VR viewer, enabling designs to be accessed via tablet computer or smartphone.