Older adults co-creating and experiencing VR garden tours: Developing a participatory VR storytelling framework

• Older gardeners participated in co-creating, sharing, and viewing narrated VR garden tours. • VR garden tours fostered a sense of connection and community through shared passions. • The tours enabled gardeners to showcase creativity and be inspired by others. • Viewers experienced a strong sense of presence, feeling as if they were “in the garden.” • A participatory VR storytelling framework outlines key roles and elements in the process. Virtual reality (VR) technology is being used in diverse ways to enable older adults to reminisce and connect. An underexplored area is the use of VR for creating and sharing personally meaningful stories. This paper examines the use of VR technology to help nine older adults share and experience others’ stories about their gardens. Through a co-design approach involving home visits, interviews, and a workshop, we examined older gardeners’ perceptions and experiences of co-creating, sharing, and viewing narrated 3D garden tours captured with a VR camera. Our findings demonstrate that participants showcased the meaning, creativity, and expertise associated with their gardens and gardening practices through the VR garden tours. Viewing the garden tours created by others fostered a sense of connection among participants through shared passions and interests. Participants valued the authenticity and individuality of the tours, perceiving them as avenues for learning, inspiration, and motivation. Viewers experienced a strong sense of presence in the garden tours, particularly due to the spatial immersion, holistic perspectives, the first-person view, and the ability to exert control in the VR system. The study reveals opportunities to enhance the VR garden tour experience, including increasing sociality, improving usability and guidance, and building communities around the tours. Drawing from these insights, we develop a framework to guide future practices of conducting participatory VR storytelling with older adults. The framework outlines three critical roles involved in the process: Storyteller, Facilitator, and Audience. It also discusses five key elements that need to be considered: Intention, Narrative, Medium, Context, and Engagement.