HMD in General Public for Training: Case Study of Standardized Dementia-Friendly Initiative in Japan

Use of Head-Mounted Display (HMD) and Virtual Reality has become popular and the consumer market is growing rapidly with some help from the trend of metaverse. However, practical use of HMD is still limited to either personal use for entertainment, experimental use within industrial training or professional training, or for research purpose within academic practice. Therefore, this paper introduced the HMD to a practical training program, a standardized dementia friendly initiative which trains the general public to become a "Dementia Supporters" in Japan. The training program was performed by a formal lecturer for "Dementia Supporters", and supporting staffs who are not familiar with VR technology. The HMD was used to show a short movie of a first-person view in 360 degree, associated with a normal dramatic movie about a story of dementia. Of the 157 participants who applied to participate the training program, 62 participants in the intervention group experienced the HMD, were evaluated using the User Experience Questionnaire and the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire. The evaluation results clarified that the training program using HMDs has positive effect in the index of appearance and practicality, low evaluation in the novelty, and there were no sickness observed within the participants. These results may imply the use of HMD to the general public is practical with carefully designed VR contents and training program.