Product evaluation throughout the design process is crucial for product success, which also helps to reduce design related costs. Physical prototyping is a common method to assess design alternatives, but often requires significant amounts of time and money. Extended Reality (XR) technologies are changing how products are presented to the user, making virtual prototyping an effective tool for product evaluation. However, it is generally assumed that our perceptual and emotional responses to a product viewed in an XR modality are comparable to those elicited by the physical product. This paper reports the results of a study where a group of participants evaluated three designs of a product (i.e. umbrella stands) when viewed in a real setting, Virtual Reality (VR), and VR with passive haptics (VRPH). Our goal was to observe the influence of visual media in product perception, and how the use of a complementary item (i.e. an umbrella) for interaction as well as user design expertise influence product assessment. Results show that Jordan's psycho-pleasure category of assessment was the most affected by the presentation medium, whereas the ideo-pleasure category was the only category not influenced by the medium. We also highlight that VRPH is an effective tool for product evaluation. Our study also shows that the user's background does not influence the confidence in their responses, but it can influence the assessment of certain product features. Finally, the use of a complementary item for interaction may have a significant effect on product perception.

No abstract

The availability and affordability of consumer virtual reality (VR) devices have fueled their adoption during the product design process. High fidelity virtual prototypes can be created more quickly and are more cost-effective than using traditional methods, but certain product features are still difficult to evaluate, resulting in perceptual differences when a product is assessed using different visualization techniques. In this paper, we report two case studies in which a group of participants evaluated different designs of a product typology (i.e., a watering can) as presented in VR, VR with passive haptics (VRPH) and in a real setting (R) for the first case study, and VR and R for the second case study. The semantic differential technique was used for product evaluation, and an inferential statistical method using aligned rank transform (ART) proceedings was applied to determine perceptual differences between groups. Our results showed that product characteristics assessed by touch are the most susceptible to being affected by the environment, while the user background can have an effect in some product features.

No abstract

No abstract