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VISUAL BEHAVIOUR IN THE EVALUATION OF PHYSICAL AND VIRTUAL PROTOTYPES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2023

Aurora Berni ,
Chiara Nezzi ,
Nadia Piazzolla  and
Yuri Borgianni
Aurora Berni*
Affiliation:
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
Chiara Nezzi
Affiliation:
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
Nadia Piazzolla
Affiliation:
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
Yuri Borgianni
Affiliation:
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
*
Berni, Aurora, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy, aurora.berni@natec.unibz.it

Abstract

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Product development stages are typically characterized by different forms of representations and degrees of specification, which potentially affect user's perception and evaluation. These effects are worth investigating more closely also because of the growing relevance of new technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) in the design field. The objective of this paper is to elucidate the mutual relations between forms of representation, visual behaviour, and people's evaluations. The focus is on differences between virtual and physical prototypes. In the illustrated experiment, participants visited a tiny house in an immersive VR (360° images acquisition). The results were compared with a past experiment where the physical prototype of the same product was similarly evaluated. The dwell times on Areas of Interest (AOIs) pertaining to the tiny house were compared and correlated to variables concerning subjective evaluations. The results show just a few similarities of visual exploration in terms of gazed AOIs. Substantial differences in terms of how the duration of gazing affects evaluations have been found too. The larger number of significant correlations between observations and evaluations in the virtual exploration emerged.

Keywords

Representation formVirtual realityPrototypeEvaluationCase study
Type
Article
Information
Proceedings of the Design Society , Volume 3: ICED23 , July 2023 , pp. 3821 - 3830
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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