Intergenerational Workshop for Co-designing XR Application Storyboard to Support Older Adults in Daily Tasks: Methodology and Preliminary results

Muhannad ISMAEL^1*Valérie MAQUIL¹Martine HOFFMANN²Roderick McCall¹Mohamed Saifeddine HADJ SASSI¹Eric TOBIAS³

• ¹Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
• ²GERO - Kompetenzzenter fir den Alter, 2543 Bonnevoie Luxembourg, Luxembourg
• ³Lycée Des Arts Et Métiers, L-2522 Luxembourg, Luxembourg

In the accelerating pace of technological change such as Extended Reality (XR), ensuring that emerging technologies meet the diverse needs of all population groups, including older adults, is increasingly urgent. XR technologies hold significant promise for older adults through applications in health monitoring, cognitive stimulation, physical rehabilitation, and social connection. However, realizing this potential requires that future developers deeply understand the needs, preferences, and lived experiences of older adult users knowledge best gained through direct engagement. Recent research in Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) has highlighted the value of engaging and empowering older adults in the design of creative technologies, often through intergenerational workshops. However, existing research on such workshops emphasizes outcomes for older adults, with limited insight into impacts on future developers, best practices and replicable methodologies for XR intergenerational workshops, as well as XR application areas tailored to older adults. This paper addresses these gaps through XR co-design workshops with older adults and future developers, providing a clear methodology and highlighting mutual benefits and implications for inclusive XR design for aging populations. Therefore, the main contributions of this paper are: 1) A methodology for an intergenerational workshop on XR involving participants from different age groups. 2) The results of conducting such workshops aiming to understand what participants gain or experience through the process. 3) A range of potential application areas for XR, based on storyboards co-designed by older adults and students. Furthermore, we recommend that educational technology institutions integrate such intergenerational workshops into their annual curricula. This approach would help students become more aware of and sensitive to the specific needs of older adults within society particularly in understanding the challenges and requirements older generations may face when using new technologies such as XR.