Development and Evaluation of Immersive User Interfaces for Cognitive and Physical Training

• L. Kruse

2025, Dissertation

• Endgültig publizierte Version

Zusammenfassung

Healthy aging is important to live a fulfilling, independent life. This includes, among others, striving for a good psychological, cognitive, and physical well-being. In order to remain active as long as possible, it is important to continuously promote these aspects of health. One possibility to do this is through virtual reality (VR) exergames -- applications that combine exercise and gaming to create a motivating approach, fostering long-term adherence. In order for them to show the desired effects, they need to be designed in a way that is understandable, operable, and motivating.

This dissertation investigated the effect of different VR exergames and design decisions on the user experience of older adults, aiming to answer the research question how to design immersive cognitive-physical training for older adults.
In five user studies and one systematic literature review, different aspects of VR exergames were investigated. The first study was conducted with older adults with mild dementia, and evaluated an exergame over the course of nine weeks for its effectiveness in improving psychological, cognitive and physical well-being. In a second study, another exergame was compared to traditional video-based training with older adults without dementia, aiming to determine whether these two approaches are comparable. The third study examined the effects of different dynamic difficulty adjustments with younger and older adults, and identified transferabilities and differences between these two user groups.

Further, one aspect of VR exergames was investigated in more depth: The integration of intelligent virtual agents (IVAs). With a systematic literature review, the usage and preferences regarding IVAs in the healthcare domain were investigated. We then conducted a user study to compare the effect of agent visibility on task performance, and social presence. In a final user study, we integrated an IVA communicating with the help of GPT-4o into a VR exergame and evaluated the user experience, communication and preferences of older adults.

The results of this dissertation show that VR exergames can improve psychological, cognitive, and physical well-being, and that they are comparable to video-based exercises. Further, it shows that in the design of VR applications for older adults, a multitude of considerations have to be taken into account, which largely depend on the user group and the context of the application. This emphasizes the need to integrate the end users in the design and evaluation process and to continue research in this important area.