Restorative Virtual Environment Design for Augmenting Nursing Home Rehabilitation

With increasing age, muscle strength decreases excessively rapidly if physical activity is not maintained. However, physical activity is increasingly difficult with age, due to balance, strength or coordination difficulties, arthritis, etc. Moreover, many nursing home residents become unable to experience natural surroundings. Augmenting a conventional biking exercise with a recreational virtual environment (RVE) has shown to serve as an intrinsic motivation contributor to exercise for nursing home residents. RVEs might be able to provide some of the health benefits that regular nature experiences do, but more studies on content and design of proper custom designs for RVEs is necessary. This paper reviews the background for RVE design, describes four custom RVE designs for recreational VE exploration and presents user preferences among nursing home users concerning content and other pivotal design considerations.