The purpose of this paper is to present an interdisciplinary collaboration across aging-in-place (AIP) interior designers, technology specialists and medical speech-language pathologists (SLP) for the conceptualization, development and implementation of an immersive VR environment for rehabilitation services in speech-language pathology. Specifically, rehabilitation of cognitive and language disorders was targeted.
This case study will describe the procedures of this interdisciplinary collaboration, including logistics, guided discussion, reflection, consensus building and project management across multiple phases, resulting in the completion of a holistic, interdisciplinary multiyear and multiproject collaboration.
Guided discussions, reflection and consensus building across VR design, development and implementation for application to rehabilitation for speech-language pathology and aging-in-place were documented. The three general themes from this interdisciplinary collaboration in VR design for AIP and rehabilitation services were logistics, project management and communication.
This work provides a case example of how to apply best practice guidelines (Abeele et al., 2021; Brassel et al., 2021; Birckhead et al., 2019; Dermody et al., 2020; Healy et al., 2022) in an interdisciplinary collaboration for design and practice for XR technologies in AIP and rehabilitation.
This paper is the first case study description of interdisciplinary collaboration across aging-in-place (AIP) interior designers, technology specialists and speech-language pathologists (SLP), providing an example and detailed description of procedures and recommendations for successful and sustainable interdisciplinary collaboration.
