Designing immersive technologies for older adults often overlooks the situated nature of community-based activities. While Virtual Reality (VR) offers promising affordances for meaningful enrichment, its integration remains underexplored in community musicking. We conducted a two-month field study at a Chinese Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC), collaborating with 15 older adults and 3 music therapists through observations, interviews, and envisioning workshops. Our findings identify how older adults and therapists perceive VR through the lens of established musical values, including self-cultivation, social connectedness, and emotional and aesthetic resonance. We identified polarized responses to immersion shaped by personal history, and a recognized potential for VR to support musical imagination and reinterpretation beyond mere functionality. We discuss design considerations that emphasize therapists’ roles as gatekeepers, the need for culturally meaningful content, and responsive interactions to support the inclusive and sustainable deployment of VR in managed care settings.

We present Echoing Verses, an Augmented Reality (AR) system that demonstrates a novel framework for generating dynamic, place-based narratives. Current AR applications for cultural tourism often rely on static content and generic interactions, which can limit user immersion and emotional connection to a site. To address this, we propose a conceptual framework grounded in the theory of locative narrative. This framework structures situated content generation across four key dimensions: Geospatial, Environmental, Cultural-Historical, and Embodied. We implemented this framework in an AR application that generates real-time, contextual poetry based on multi-source data, including GPS, live weather, and local cultural records. The system features an embodied breath-based interaction, allowing users to engage with the narrative in an intuitive and poetic manner. This paper contributes: a) a conceptual framework for generative, place-based AR content, and b) the design and implementation of a complete system that validates the framework’s potential. Our work offers a new path for creating more dynamic, personal, and deeply situated AR experiences in cultural tourism.

With the development of digital technology, tourists have higher expectations for their experiences with digital cultural heritage (CH). However, there is limited research and design guidelines on how to effectively convey expert knowledge and transfer the value and connotations of digital CH to users in a virtual environment. Based on existing literature, we proposed a systematic design strategy for immersive virtual reality (IVR) systems, incorporating multimodal interaction, gamification, and storytelling for CH presentation, development, and promotion to the public. Accordingly, taking the virtual restoration of the Dunhuang murals as an example, we developed an IVR system that provided users with learning, interactive, and entertaining experiences, facilitating their transition from mere visitors to active learners while engaging with digital CH. We conducted a between-subjects user study involving 42 participants. The results demonstrated that our IVR system motivated users interests in CH, promoted CH preservation awareness, and could be applied in the domain of digital CH experiences.

The pandemic has shifted people’s shopping behavior towards online resources. Mobile screen-based panoramic virtual reality (VR) appears to be a promising form for future online shopping. However, the existing user interface (UI) design of panoramic VR shopping needs more natural interactions based on a rational standard design guideline. In this article, we first conducted a heuristic study to compare six representative virtual store apps. This revealed a gap between users’ requirements and the current design attempts. Thus, a UI design guideline for panoramic VR in the shopping scene was presented. Then, we conducted a verification study with a demo optimized according to our design guideline. Both user experience and interactive efficiency improved as a result of the design guideline. Our design guidelines and discoveries derived from user studies provided references for the design, development, and potential use of dynamic panoramic VR in shopping scene.