VR-enabled Digital Twin System Architecture of User-centred Living Labs: A user experience study with older adults

This paper introduces the concept of Virtual Reality (VR)-enabled digital twin living labs, which are precise virtual replicas of real-world living labs, and explores their potential in housing research and development. The study outlines the system architecture of a VR-enabled digital twin living lab at the building scale, the Empathetic Home Digital Twin, and investigates the user experience of older adults engaging within this innovative system. The research employs a natural observation method to study the interactions, feedback, and implications for empathetic design. The findings highlight the importance of context familiarity, collective engagement, and intuitive design in building trust and promoting the acceptance of new technologies among older adult users. Key design recommendations, such as optimal VR session duration, gradual adaptation to the VR environment, concise orientation sessions, simplified interaction dynamics, seamless communication mechanisms, and an intuitive user interface, are provided for designing a VR experience tailored to engage older adults. The study acknowledges certain limitations, such as the need for more age-appropriate VR equipment and the small sample size of participants and suggests addressing these limitations in future studies. The potential of VR-enabled digital twins in housing research and development is significant, and future studies can explore their full potential to transform living lab approaches within housing research and development.