Exploring experiences of virtual reality among young and older adults in a subway fire scenario: A pilot study

Abstract

We report a pilot study investigating experiences of virtual reality (VR) among young and older adults in a subway fire scenario. We created VR environments in subway fire scenarios and ran an experiment by asking 5 young and 5 older adults to explore VR environments. After the experiment, participants were asked to fill out a survey questionnaire to report their feelings. Additionally, we conducted semi-structured interviews with participants to understand challenges they faced while exploring VR environments. We found that compared with young adults, older adults tended to be different during the process of evacuating a subway station in virtual reality. We suggest design opportunities for creating VR environments for more effective training of older adults.