# Connecting the Elderly Using VR: A Novel Art-Driven Methodology
## 6 Conclusions  
In conclusion, this research study observed a heightened willingness among seniors to engage with VR and modern technologies. The research team noted their desire to create their own content, which was subsequently incorporated into the virtual village's outdoor elements. Participants expressed motivation derived from the interactive and socializing aspects of the VR environment, feeling both creative and explorative. Image sentiment analysis was employed to assess their sentiments, revealing high levels of acceptance.  
More specifically, the assessment considered aspects such as social connection, pleasantness, memory stimulation, and overall satisfaction. The majority of senior testers expressed strong agreement regarding the village's ability to stimulate creativity (71%), its originality (57% strongly agreed, 43% agreed), and its potential to enhance social connections (57%). The results also indicated positive sentiments towards the ease of use of the VR platform, with 72% finding it easy to use and none reporting dizziness during the experimentation session. This study further delved into valence and arousal, revealing that subjects generally felt activated and calm during the exploration of the virtual village. These findings suggest promising prospects for the virtual village concept,highlighting its potential to positively impact seniors' daily lives from both a social and emotional perspective.  
It is important to acknowledge that our proposed methodology has limitations and potential threats to validity, including a small participant sample size and the absence of advanced statistical inference for comparing different evaluation stages. As part of future work, we plan to address these limitations by increasing the number of participants and incorporating additional techniques, such as physiological signal processing algorithms, to detect users' emotional states. This will optimize the adaptiveness of the VR environment by measuring physiological signals like galvanic skin response (GSR). Furthermore, real-time adaptation of the VR environment based on users' navigation behavior will be achieved through visual sentiment analysis.  
Conceptualization, M.V.K., M.B. and S.D.; Funding acquisition, S.V. and I.K. ([PERSON]); Methodology, M.V.K., V.-R.X. and T.P.; Project administration, N.G. and S.D.; Resources, T.P., I.K. ([PERSON]) and P.S.; Software, T.P., V.-R.X., A.T., Y.S., K.V. and P.K.; Supervision, S.D., N.G., S.V. and I.K. ([PERSON]); Investigation, V.-R.X., T.P., A.T. and M.V.K.; Writing--original draft preparation, M.V.K.; Writing--review and editing, M.V.K., A.T., V.-R.X. and T.P. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This work was supported by the EC-funded Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programmes MindSpaces under Grant Agreement No. 825079 and ReSilence under Grant Agreement No. 101070278.  
Ethical review and approval were waived for this study from CERTH Ethics Committee with registration number: ETH.COM-54.  
Informed Consent Statement: Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.  
The developed and used dataset can be exploited by the research community, acting as a benchmark for image-based sentiment analysis, and is publicly available following the required copyrights: [[https://m4d.iti.gr/urban-indoor-outdoor-sentiment-analysis-dataset-mindspaces/](https://m4d.iti.gr/urban-indoor-outdoor-sentiment-analysis-dataset-mindspaces/)]([https://m4d.iti.gr/urban-indoor-outdoor-sentiment-analysis-dataset-mindspaces/](https://m4d.iti.gr/urban-indoor-outdoor-sentiment-analysis-dataset-mindspaces/)) (accessed on 31 October 2023).  
Author [PERSON] was employed by the company Nurogames (NURO). Author [PERSON] was employed by the company E-Seniors. Author [PERSON] was employed by the company UP2 METRIC (U2M). The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.