Older adults face significant loss and limitations in terms of mobility, cognitive ability, and socialization. By using augmented reality and virtual reality technologies they have the potential to overcome such loss and limitations, and to eventually improve their quality of life. However, this group is often excluded in augmented reality and virtual reality deployment. Further, limited studies address their challenges when using augmented reality and virtual reality. Therefore, for a critical review of augmented reality and virtual reality for older adults, we developed a framework to evaluate related factors, including physical, social, and psychological wellbeing. Through the critical review, we identified that most augmented reality and virtual reality studies focus on physical wellbeing of older adults but also make substantial efforts to increase their psychological wellbeing. Fun factors that would motivate them are also extensively considered. Further, social isolation continues to be a significant issue for older adults, but the appropriate content to increase their social wellbeing is insufficient, although many commercial products have been developed. The contribution of the present study is to provide a contextual framework and an evaluation framework for the critical review of augmented reality and virtual reality technologies to promote wellbeing in older adults. This study also suggests the augmented reality and virtual reality research direction for studies on this group by identifying the research gap through the critical review process. Lastly, this study investigates design directions of augmented reality and virtual reality for older adults by introducing challenges and design issues that emerged through the critical review.

Smart environments and the use of interactive technology has the potential to improve the quality of life for the senior community as well as to support the connections among the senior community and the world outside their community. In addition to the increasing number of studies in the field of aging and technologies, research is needed to understand the practical issues of user focus, adoption, and engagement for older adults to accept interactive technologies in their lives. In this study, we use two commercial technological interventions (uDraw and GrandPad) to understand technology-related perceptions and behaviors of older adults. We present five case studies that emerge from empirical observations of initial engagement with technology through research methods such as focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, observations, and diary studies. The contributions of this study are identification of the key factors that influence the initial engagement with interactive technology for older adults.

Helping students learn to identify and respond to situations involving discrimination is important, especially in fields like Computer Science where there is evidence of an unwelcoming climate that disproportionately drives underrepresented students out of the field. While students should not be considered responsible for fixing issues around discrimination in their institutions, they do have a role to play. In this paper, we present the results of a study in which 318 undergraduate computer science majors were presented with scenarios of discrimination and asked to identify the issues, rate the severity of the issues, and ideate 3–5 responses to address the described situations. They were also asked to identify which of their responses would likely be most effective in addressing discrimination and which of their responses they would be most likely to use if they were in the situation described in real life. Our results show that while students generally are able to identify various forms of discrimination (sexism, racism, religious discrimination, ethnic discrimination, etc.), any ambiguity in a scenario led to students describing the scenario as less severe and/or as an example of oversensitivity. We also show that students come up with many passive responses to scenarios of discrimination (such as ignoring the situation or wishing it had not happened in the first place). Students in our study were more likely to say they would deploy passive responses in real life, shying away from responses that involve direct confrontation. We observed some differences between student demographic subgroups. Women and BIPOC students in CS tend to think these issues are more severe than men and White and Asian students in CS. Women are more likely to ideate direct confrontation responses and report willingness to use direct confrontation responses in real situations. Our work contributes a methodology for examining student awareness and understanding of diversity issues as well as a demonstration that undergraduate computer science students need help in learning how to address common situations that involve either intentional or unintentional discrimination in an academic environment.