Abstract
In the design of urban public spaces, the inclusion of diverse voices enhances the development of products and services by synchronising designer expertise with people’s preferences. Multiple participatory methods exist, each with their respective benefits and drawbacks in terms of the quality of results, time and cost needed for preparing and conducting studies, and knowledge required for participation. Providing more concrete representations of abstract or intangible design concepts would be beneficial for laypeople unfamiliar with design or the case study. We propose a Virtual Reality (VR) platform to discover subjective preferences on public waiting rooms through immersive design experiences. The VR platform was tested with 463 participants with variety in age and cultural background. Following a qualitative data analysis, we discuss the suitability of our VR platform for fostering inclusive participation and how it impacts the role of the designer, as well as propose design guidelines for future VR studies.
Keywords
Virtual Reality, Participatory Design Method, User Preferences, Design Guidelines
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2020.308
Citation
Stadler, S., Cornet, H., and Frenkler, F. (2020) Collecting People’s Preferences in Immersive Virtual Reality: A Case Study on Public Spaces in Singapore, Germany, and France, in Boess, S., Cheung, M. and Cain, R. (eds.), Synergy - DRS International Conference 2020, 11-14 August, Held online. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2020.308
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Collecting People’s Preferences in Immersive Virtual Reality: A Case Study on Public Spaces in Singapore, Germany, and France
In the design of urban public spaces, the inclusion of diverse voices enhances the development of products and services by synchronising designer expertise with people’s preferences. Multiple participatory methods exist, each with their respective benefits and drawbacks in terms of the quality of results, time and cost needed for preparing and conducting studies, and knowledge required for participation. Providing more concrete representations of abstract or intangible design concepts would be beneficial for laypeople unfamiliar with design or the case study. We propose a Virtual Reality (VR) platform to discover subjective preferences on public waiting rooms through immersive design experiences. The VR platform was tested with 463 participants with variety in age and cultural background. Following a qualitative data analysis, we discuss the suitability of our VR platform for fostering inclusive participation and how it impacts the role of the designer, as well as propose design guidelines for future VR studies.