Rendever makes the lives of seniors better using VR

Hello Tom, can you introduce yourself to my readers?

I’m Tom Neumann, the CTO, and co-founder of Rendever. I’ve been in the VR world since the DK2 days and have built a wide variety of applications for both enterprises and consumers. Alongside our work at Rendever, I’ve been lucky enough to consult with a bunch of major organizations, lead significant content partnerships, and co-create Alcove, which was developed in partnership with AARP.

More than anything, I’m someone who is grateful to be in a position where I can work with a technology I love in a way that makes a meaningful difference in people’s lives.

What is Rendever?

Rendever is overcoming social isolation through the power of virtual reality and shared experiences. We work with senior living communities and have created a platform that empowers them to foster personal connections through the incredible experiences on our platform, which are all enjoyed as a group. What makes us particularly unique is that everything we’ve built is specific to seniors and senior living staff. Our system offers the largest and most diverse library of content and experiences across the entire industry, and was built to offer users the ability to check off bucket list items, visit familiar places from their past, and stay connected with their family – no matter the physical distance between them.

We’ve built a platform that is helping people every day.

Why are there so few XR companies targeting the elderly and why have you decided to go for this kind of users, instead?

Through personal experiences across our founding team, it became clear there was an opportunity for VR to positively impact older adults suffering from loneliness and social isolation in senior living communities.

When older adults move into a community, they often find themselves leaving friends and family behind, which can be devastating. On top of that, with age comes increasingly limited access to the activities and places that are most important to us. So, we wanted to help prevent the sense of loss that is so often associated with the aging process. At the time of Rendever’s inception, VR was an emerging technology that seemed like the perfect tool for the job because it has the ability to take people to another place, another time, or another new environment. It allows people to do what would otherwise be impossible. This world-expanding opportunity is massively valuable for those who have had their access to the world restricted, or in some cases almost completely cut-off, due to various challenges that arise as we age.

Sadly, seniors are often overlooked when it comes to innovation and cutting-edge technology. There are a bunch of challenges unique to the sector: limited success with technology adoption, a need for training, and the reasonable fear of “not getting it.” That said, for companies like ours who are willing to commit to the solution, the impact that you can have is absolutely amazing.

You just got a $2M Phase II Grant from the National Institute of Aging (NIA) to study the effect of VR on the elderly. What have been the results of the study so far?

Phase 1 tested the feasibility of using virtual reality with older adults who have some form of cognitive decline, from mild cognitive impairment to moderate dementia, with a family member who lives at a distance. The results were very positive. Both the older adults and their children “found VR to be safe, extremely enjoyable and easy to use.” Participants were more conversationally and behaviorally engaged during VR sessions than in baseline telephone calls. The conclusion was that “combining networking and live streaming features in a single virtual reality platform can allow older adults in senior living communities to still travel, relive their past, and engage fully with life with their family members, despite geographical separation and physical and cognitive challenges.”

While Phase 1 primarily focused on feasibility, Phase 2 is focused on outcomes. Data collection for this exciting trial has begun in October 2021.

Let’s talk about RendeverFit, the product you just launched. How would you describe it?

RendeverFit™ is the first senior-focused VR application to combine physical activity with cognitive stimulation and social engagement.

Fitness in VR has really taken off – it’s an accessible way to exercise that is actually fun and can change lives. Proof of this is found throughout the reviews of consumer VR fitness applications. Users who describe the challenges they’ve had in getting going with exercise and the way in which VR changed the game for them. Motivation is key, and there are a lot of people out there that are more likely to spend an hour playing Beat Saber — or, now, RendeverFit™ — than on a treadmill. This is just as true for older adults as it is for younger generations.

There’s no doubt that we’ve made fitness fun, but what makes RendeverFit™ so great is the impact. Structured exercise is great for anyone, but it is especially important to the elderly as a lack of physical activity can, and often does, lead to a variety of severe complications, including a decline in cognitive function, overall health, and wellbeing.

Why have you chosen Cycle, Paddle, and Paint as the first three available activities?

While all three are social, physical, cognitive and a ton of fun, each brings something different to the table.

Paint allows for free creative expression and leverages MultiBrush, our multiplayer implementation of Google’s popular Tilt Brush; this is a creative environment most older adults have never experienced before. It’s awesome to watch as they move around their virtual canvas, create their own personal masterpiece, and have way too much fun to realize it is exercise!

Cycle is fast-paced, leverages a mini portable version of a stationary bike, and works both the upper body and lower body. Participants bicycle through beautiful landscapes with their friends and reach out to “pop” colored balloons, compete for high scores, and enjoy the scenery.

Paddle helps users develop agility and requires precise, carefully-controlled movements. We set it up so that participants get to hone their skills and develop their swing through target practice on a remote island. Over time, they get to celebrate their improved accuracy as they climb through the ranks on Rendever’s global leaderboard!

Why have you implemented multiplayer? And what kind of multiplayer activities are possible in this application?

From its inception, Rendever has always used virtual reality to reduce social isolation through the power of shared experiences – implementing multiplayer allows us to stay true to that mission. Everything we do is designed to bring people closer together.

The multiplayer function allows users to enjoy collaborative experiences as well as competitive ones. RendeverFit™ pits participants against each other to compete for the high score at their community, within their operator group, or across our global scoreboard. At the same time, Paint brings people together to share in the experience of creating something unique, beautiful, and fun. We’ve received amazing feedback on the collaborative experiences with Paint, so we’re very excited about where we can develop that over time.

What are the difficulties of designing an application for this kind of users?

Our users have a huge range of experience with technology, and varying physical and cognitive abilities. For example, Rendever is also used in memory care units with residents who live with Alzheimer’s Disease and other forms of cognitive decline. As such, we’ve created a platform that is accessible to everyone – by necessity. Our experiences can be controlled through a tablet by staff, which makes the headset as easy to use as putting on a pair of glasses. We find that experiences which are enhanced by interaction, but that do not require interaction, tend to work well.

Physical limitations such as arthritis can make controllers, especially their buttons, difficult to use for some older adults. To overcome that, we have an entire platform that does not require any user interaction at all. As we launch things like RendeverFit™, we design it in such a way that the different modules (Cycle, Paint, Paddle) use different modes of user interaction. Between the three, we have created a platform that accommodates users with a wide range of abilities.

Elderly-oriented smartphone apps have usually very simple UI with big buttons and writings. How have you designed the UI/UX of this application?

Unsurprisingly, many of the older adults we work with are not quite as comfortable using virtual interfaces and motion controls as we are. Our platform is designed in a way that allows for headsets to be controlled through a tablet by a staff member in a senior living community. Residents are able to just put the headset on, look around and enjoy the experience. Early on, we found that people who had trouble with interactions would often become frustrated and give up, even if they loved the technology and otherwise enjoyed the experience. Given that experience, we made sure the experience for older adults was as simple as putting on the headset and then focused on also simplifying the UX for the staff.

What is the feature your users like the most about RendeverFit? Is it the multiplayer or the various activities they can do inside?

Multiplayer is definitely a hit. People love the collaborative, creative expression of Paint, the competitive side of Cycle, and the agility required for Paddle. We get to build for people that have a wide range of cognitive and physical abilities, and there is something for each of them in RendeverFit™, which is super-rewarding.

What have been the results of the trials of your app on the first subjects?

RendeverFit™ was just unveiled a few weeks ago, and we’re working on a few research projects but no hard data here yet. Anecdotally, one of the most exciting things we’ve seen has been the enthusiasm from not just residents, but from staff as well. Every demonstration we’ve done with residents has been so full of joy and laugh-out-loud moments that we have staff running in and asking to try. Of course, we let them, and may just need to design some extra features for workplace wellness.

What do elder people like about VR and what issues do they have about it instead?

In the beginning, we believed that what we were working on made sense, and of course, we had tried VR with a relatively small set of test users. The response was, and is, overwhelmingly positive but there was originally some industry-wide hesitancy. As with the general population, there are some for whom VR is an uncomfortable experience, especially when there is any disconnect between their visual and vestibular senses, but we have not found this to be any more pronounced among seniors. In those who have undergone cognitive decline, we have found that reactions are highly individual and we trust experienced caregivers – who know their residents well – to have an intuitive understanding of who VR is not well-suited for.

One thing I’ve learned is that experiences that make use of real-world imagery tend to be more popular than games, although this is by no means universal. Some art styles can be perceived as too childish, and some interfaces can be challenging, but with curation and careful design we have very few complaints from our users. In fact, I have found that initial reactions within our target audience are often even stronger than among younger first-time users. I suspect this is partly due to the fact that many older adults do not commit as much time to keeping up with technological progress the way that younger generations do – they aren’t always racing to try the latest and greatest electronics.

How can we make headsets (and related runtimes) more elderly-friendly?

The challenge is in my opinion less with the technology itself than with everything that surrounds the delivery of the experience. What we’ve found is that people often have trouble with all of the overhead required to get into the experience in the first place. Getting a headset setup through a smartphone, creating accounts, pairing controllers, setting up a guardian, getting onto WiFi, browsing app stores full of content that is mostly designed for gamers, navigating interfaces that often depend on prior experience with technology, the list goes on – we do all of that for our partners. More importantly, we design and deliver experiences that focus on the biggest opportunities for impact within this demographic – building social connections. When the impact created is high, which is what we see with all of our users, the devices become inherently sticky.

Is VR the future of elderly care?

It’s certainly a big part of it. Better use of technology, especially healthtech and communications technology that focus on social health, can have a huge impact on the lives of the elderly. The population around the world is getting older and we need to focus on supporting aging adults and supporting them to age well. If we continue to work toward that end, I see a very bright future for VR in the future of care for our aging population.

What are your future plans for Rendever?

These are exciting times and we’re definitely in execution mode right now – as we’ve covered, we just announced quite a number of important advancements. We’re focusing on making sure that the next phase of implementation goes well. Of course, new hardware with new capabilities emerges on a regular basis, and we’re eager to integrate more as we continue to innovate on behalf of this incredible, widespread demographic.

Anything else to add to this interview?

We are incredibly excited for the future and are always looking for people to join our team or companies to partner with us and deliver impactful new experiences – if you’re interested, please do reach out!