CREATE has another international collaboration to announce, entitled “Cross-Cultural Insights into Virtual Reality Adoption: Enhancing Cognitive, Activity, and Social Engagement for Older Adults in the U.S. and China.”  The collaboration is with the Research Center for Aging User Experience and Service System Design (AeX), The Future Laboratory in Tsinghua University, China.

Dr. Jihong Jeung leads the project as a principal investigator, and the China team includes Tongxin Sun, a former visiting scholar at the Illinois site. This project investigates how older adults in different cultural contexts adopt and engage with virtual reality (VR) technologies. The primary goals are to identify the barriers and facilitators affecting older adults’ VR adoption across diverse cultural settings and to explore how VR can enhance social, cognitive, and activity engagement in both the U.S. and China. Building on the protocols of the CREATE VR Preference Study, this research examines socio-cultural differences, providing critical insights into how VR systems can be customized to meet the diverse needs of older adults. Using a mixed-methods design, the study will include 16 participants from Illinois, U.S., and 16 participants from Beijing, China. The findings will contribute to the design of culturally inclusive and adaptive VR systems that enhance engagement and quality of life for older adults. The insights gained from this study will be instrumental in shaping the future design of VR systems, ensuring they address the socio-cultural and engagement needs of older adults globally.