Design Considerations for Immersive Virtual Reality Applications for Older Adults: A Scoping Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Early-stage research with potential to formulate guidelines-requirements-procedures for design engineering with CPSs or XRs for the ageing population.

Especially, the part on 'longitudinal' studies is of interest in conjunction with the 'holistic' approach.

Pls. add: description 'head mounted display (HMD)' > full description needed in Introduction 2nd par.-line 9

Pain/ anxiety: see for example > http://www.hitl.washington.edu/people/hunter/

Much study and experimentation has been done with VR-related systems and contraptions, however, technology pushes and markets pull, leaving behind a trail of "UX-dust and IA-havoc"...this shows clearly from your research whereby OR has (marketing) the major influence because of the "promise" that was coined by the VR-Industry

Author Response

Dear Editors & reviewers,

Thank you for your email dated 5^th July 2022 enclosing the reviewers' comments on our manuscript, " Design Considerations for Immersive Virtual Reality Applications for Older Adults: A Scoping Review".

We have carefully reviewed the comments and have edited the manuscript to address the concerns and suggestions. Our responses are given in a point-by-point manner below. We also provide a supplemental file to highlight the changes from the original version.

We hope the revised version is now suitable for publication and look forward to hearing from you in due course.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Kiran Ijaz

1. “Head-mounted display” (HMD): A full description is needed in the Introduction, 2^nd paragraph, line 9.

In response to this comment, the abbreviation HMD for "head-mounted display" was introduced in the location mentioned above.

2. Pain/ Anxiety, see for example http://www.hitl.washington.edu/people/hunter.html

Thank you for pointing to this critical work in Pain/Anxiety. Since this review paper is focused on literature for older adults. We really acknowledge considering this body of work for our future projects in the domain.

Reviewer 2 Report

The article titled “Design Considerations for Immersive Virtual Reality Applica-tions for Older Adults: A Scoping Review” is a typical review paper. It is clearly written and understandable. It concerns extremely current issues related to the dynamically developing virtual reality technology in the context of its use by the elderly. The manuscript has the correct structure characteristic of reviews. It was written in accordance with the appropriate methodology of writing this type of study. It is difficult to find any irregularities. I have only a few technical comments, which, if taken into account by the authors, may contribute to the improvement of the quality of the work, and especially make it easier for readers to use the very interesting content contained in it.

In view of the above, I propose to consider:

1.      In Table 1, which is on the next three pages, enter the notation continued (cont.) or mark the following tables as a), b), c).

2.      The form of Figure 4 is very innovative and attractive, but due to the multitude of information it contains, it is not legible, even when you try to enlarge the text. I suggest changing the form of the presentation or increasing the quality of the graphics so that after enlarging it, there is no problem with reading the text.

Finally, I congratulate the authors of their good work and I am convinced that it will be useful for researchers who deal with the subject of virtual reality in their scientific work, especially in the context of its use by older people. I recommend the work for printing.

Author Response

Dear Editors & reviewers,

Thank you for your email dated 5^th July 2022 enclosing the reviewers' comments on our manuscript, " Design Considerations for Immersive Virtual Reality Applications for Older Adults: A Scoping Review".

We have carefully reviewed the comments and have edited the manuscript to address the concerns and suggestions. Our responses are given in a point-by-point manner below. We also provide a supplemental file to highlight the changes from the original version.

We hope the revised version is now suitable for publication and look forward to hearing from you in due course.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Kiran Ijaz

1. In Table 1, which is on the next three pages, enter the notation continued (cont.) or mark the following tables as a), b), c).

To address this comment, we revised the caption of Table 1 as folows: “Summary of 36 reviewed articles (OA: older adults, YA: young adults, Symbol "⏤": Not specified). The articles were arranged alphabetically by the first author's surname and divided into three sections: A, B, and C”. We also marked the tables A, B and C accordingly.

2. The form of Figure 4 is very innovative and attractive, but due to the multitude of information it contains, it is not legible, even when you try to enlarge the text. I suggest changing the form of the presentation or increasing the quality of the graphics so that after enlarging it, there is no problem with reading the text.

To address this comment, we prepared a high-quality PDF version of the image for publication. This will ensure that Figure 4 (and other figures) are legible because the reader can enlarge the image. We will work together with editorial team to maintain the quailtiy of graphics in the final version of paper generated through the system.