Virtual, Remote Participation in Museum Visits by Older Adults

Our general goal is to devise methods and develop tools that enable older adults to experience museum visits from home. In general, we take the approach of leveraging friends or family members that can visit the museum, who act as facilitators in the remote experiencing process. The methods derive from insights obtained by studies we have conducted and range from low-intrusion ones (where family members enjoy their museum visit, and sharing of experiences is facilitated by allowing them to “bring home” memories of their visits that can be easily shared with older adults) to methods and tools enabling a synchronous interaction between family members and the older relative during the visit (e.g., via dedicated virtual environments). This latter is the focus of our ongoing work.