Moving Between the Virtual and Real - Children Trying Out a Metaverse Digital Twin

In this exploratory study we created a digital twin of a Japanese kindergarten and placed it in a metaverse platform, proposing a new interaction paradigm called Parallel-Twin-Worlds where an extended digital twin of the physical environment is created in virtual reality. Seven 5-6-year-old children participated in a treasure hunt, where they first conducted a task in the metaverse environment and then conducted the same task in their kindergarten. Our findings show that children quite effortlessly understood the link between the virtual and real worlds. We assume that this is due to recreating the environment as a digital twin, where the visual correspondence with reality made it easier for users to understand the correlation without the need for special lectures. We propose using the Parallel-Twin-Worlds paradigm for teaching the digital twin concept to children.