Video-mediated Participation in Virtual Museum Tours for Older Adults

This paper introduces a virtual tour, Visit the Louvre, designed specifically to engage older adults in an immersive visit through part of the Louvre by a distant real-life guide. An initial diary study and a creative workshop were conducted to understand the needs and values of older adults and how to support participation to virtual museum visits with a video-based communication system. Preliminary results show that ‘virtual visitors’ experienced high levels of social and spatial presence; immersion and engagement were quite high independent of the level of interactivity of the guide, or the presence of others.
QC 20170110