With implications for VR and AR displays, researchers hypothesized about the influence of XR on design and development, particularly virtual prototyping. In their study, VR, and AR environments – as well as non-immersive environments such as non-photorealistic renderings, and photographs – were used to assess the perceptual response of participants to furniture design.
The assessment was done using cognitive ergonomics, a field of study that focuses on how people interact with technology and how design can be optimized to improve the user experience. Specifically, evaluation were done based on the work of Patrick W. Jordan, Designing Pleasurable Products. Jordan’s book explores how good designs can appeal to users holistically and also describes new design and evaluation techniques, establishing methodologies and factor-based assessments that may be statistically relevant.
The relevance to display design comes in the conclusions where the researchers find that 3D environments provide richer information and can create greater levels of certainty and confidence in a design. There are also some uncertainties including the influence of experience of virtual technologies. Nevertheless, immersive environments do a pretty good job in aiding product design and point of sale but may not be as effective in influencing purchasing decisions. My bias kicks in here, enough to say that we should see AR/VR/XR technologies as being fundamentally driven by industrial, educational, and business use cases. There’s still a lot more that needs to be done to create more compelling reasons for the adoption of immersive environments, but there seems to be enough scientific evidence to show meaningful ROI at the process level.
Reference
Palacios-Ibáñez, A., Navarro-Martínez, R., Blasco-Esteban, J., Contero, M., & Camba, J. D. (2023). On the application of extended reality technologies for the evaluation of product characteristics during the initial stages of the product development process. Computers in Industry, 144, 103780. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compind.2022.103780
