“Immersing in Their World” 🥽 🎮

ImmersifyVR at Chateau Cupertino

Introduction

We are ImmersifyVR, a team of four students and two coaches. We built a VR application currently with one activity: swimming. Our application aims to offer story-driven experiences to empower the elderly to become physically active.

On October 12th, we visited Chateau Cupertino, a senior living community located in Silicon Valley. By partnering with them, we aimed to leverage their resources and resident population to gather valuable user feedback and refine our virtual reality experience.

During our visit, our main goal was to do as much user testing and feedback-collecting as possible. When the seniors had arrived and we were ready, we started with a basic presentation to introduce us, virtual reality, and our product. Then, once all questions the seniors had about VR were answered, we began passing around three headsets, helping them one-on-one through the experience. Although it was difficult for us to explain and the seniors to use VR, this became interesting feedback to discuss after

everyone had gone.

Coach Lucas

I’m Coach Lucas, the business coach of the ImmersifyVR team! Our team members: Alan, Jaeho, Flynn, and Jonny, have done amazing work over the past few months. It’s my honor to help them strive toward competition season and to watch their steady progress on our virtual reality application. When I arrived at Chateau Cupertino around a half hour before our event time, I was hit by the realization that we were switching rooms and then adapted to the circumstances by moving around half a room of furniture. The setup was brutal. But as the time was nearing 2:00 pm, our planned event time, our team members sprung into action and gave an amazing presentation to a nice turnout of older adults! It amazed me how smoothly our first user test went — it was an unforgettable experience and I learned a lot from being present there. My favorite memory was a woman asking where she could continue trying virtual reality after we left. We were able to leave a lasting impression on some of the seniors just by exposing them to new technologies they’d never had the chance to try before.

Coach Andy(Tech) — Joined virtually during entire session from Santa Barbara, CA where he is. Coach Andy played an invaluable role as the team’s tech mentor, demonstrating unwavering support and dedication. Empowering and patient, he guided the team throughout their outreach visit by staying connected via Zoom the entire time, providing real-time advice and encouragement from Santa Barbara. His commitment extended beyond the event, as he stayed late for the reflection session, offering insightful feedback and actionable guidance. Coach Andy’s mentorship not only strengthened the team’s technical skills but also boosted their confidence and ability to take meaningful next steps. His presence truly made a lasting impact every single outreach event including this session.

Alan

At Chateau Cupertino, I didn’t do much on the technical side because I didn’t have my VR headset, but most of the time I was focused on asking questions to the people who had tested the VR headsets and our game. It was nice to get to see the demographic of the people we were catering our product towards and hear their opinions on the product that we had created. The overall responses were very diverse as some people didn’t seem to enjoy it at all as contrasted with some people who enjoyed the experience quite a lot compared to others. The most unexpected part was the fact that the projector kept blinking on and off most of the time during the presentation and I didn’t have my lines really memorized so that was a big blunder.

Jaeho

At Chateau Cupertino, I was one of the three people in charge of passing around a headset and helping the seniors test our application on it. I found it fun just to be there and help them through the experience, as some of them seemed genuinely interested and invested in virtual reality which was nice to see. To me, this was actually something I didn’t expect, as I was fully prepared to have an event with bugs, confusion, and frustration. However, it wasn’t all smooth sailing, as some things out of and in our control went wrong, from the projector not working properly to our project’s flaws. I knew our project obviously wasn’t finished, but through this event, I realized how difficult it was to understand all the controls and mechanics of the experience for the seniors. Learning how to use the controllers was already hard enough, but on top of that the seniors had to learn the swimming mechanic as well as the fish, which was definitely too difficult.

Flynn

I recently had the opportunity to help provide a VR experience at Chateau Cupertino. It was humbling, yet at the same time quite inspiring, to see that the seniors were genuinely curious and excited about the technology. However, it became evident that the learning curve for VR, especially for those unfamiliar with technology, could be much steeper than we may have thought. Some of the seniors needed help understanding the mechanics behind the VR headset and controllers, which called for much guidance and repetition in explanations. As thrilling as it is, the ability to immerse the individual often makes the experience disorienting for those unfamiliar. Some raised concerns over motion sickness and difficulty navigating the virtual environments. To me, their willingness to take up this new technology is inspiring and reinforces the need for friendly user interfaces and detailed tutorials to make sure that the adoption of VR is with minimal friction and provides much value.

Jonny

I arrived at Chateau Cupertino around 1:50 p.m., about ten minutes before the event started. Since our original room had been taken for another event, we moved to a different, smaller room that felt warmer and more welcoming to me. We set up our projector, though it initially had a bug we struggled to fix, and prepared our headsets for the seniors. At 2 p.m., I kicked off the presentation by introducing the event and briefly acknowledging our team members and coaches. Then, each team member took turns presenting, after which we let the seniors try out our VR application. I was one of three people helping the seniors with the headsets and guiding them through the experience. I really enjoyed this part, as many of them seemed genuinely interested in VR and truly enjoyed using our application. One senior even asked where she could borrow a headset to practice VR swimming! I hadn’t expected this, especially since our app just met the bare minimum for our MVP. Overall, I think the event was a real success; we gathered valuable user feedback and enjoyed reconnecting as a team.

“Boba Sync: Reflect, Plan, Act”- Our ritual after every outreach event: gather over boba tea to reflect on valuable feedback, outline next steps, and set concrete action items for moving forward. Good things must happen right away with great memory(boba 🧋)