Successful aircraft cabin design depends on how the different stakeholders are involved since the first phases of product development. To predict passenger satisfaction prior to the manufacturing phase, human response was investigated in a Virtual Reality (VR) environment simulating a cabin aircraft. Subjective assessments of virtual designs have been collected via questionnaires, while the underlying neural mechanisms have been captured through electroencephalographic (EEG) data. In particular, we focused on the modulation of EEG alpha rhythm as a valuable marker of the brain’s internal state and investigated which changes in alpha power and connectivity can be related to a different visual comfort perception by comparing groups with higher and lower comfort rates. Results show that alpha-band power decreased in occipital regions during subjects’ immersion in the virtual cabin compared with the relaxation state, reflecting attention to the environment. Moreover, alpha-band power was modulated by comfort perception: lower comfort was associated with a lower alpha power compared to higher comfort. Further, alpha-band Granger connectivity shows top-down mechanisms in higher comfort participants, modulating attention and restoring partial relaxation. Present results contribute to understanding the role of alpha rhythm in visual comfort perception and demonstrate that VR and EEG represent promising tools to quantify human–environment interactions.

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In recent days product design and review cycles are considerably held to many constraints and requirements. One of the main requirements regards the usability of solutions and the impact that design choices have on final users. Therefore, it is becoming crucial to anticipate human factors concerns in the preliminary phases of product development process. Also, since human factors affect the users subconsciously and influence the decision making in a significant way, they need to be enabled to observe the users while interacting with the product in real-time. In this framework, the platform that the human factors expert and the users use plays a vital role in influencing the human factor assessments and evaluations. Latest developments in Extended Reality opened the way toward the possibility to conceive new simulation platforms that allow experts to deeply explore the products in real-time through collaborative and interactive environments before the physical mockup of the product. The purpose of this paper is to outline a Mixed Reality (MR) tool in the field of aircraft interior design to demonstrate it as a potential co-creative platform for involving human factor experts in the loop while the task is ongoing. An MR multi-user, co-located, collaborative and interactive environment of an aircraft galley is developed where the HF specialist and flight crew member can co-exist to visualize the real scale model of the galley and perform an operational task. Such cocreative tool is foreseen to execute usability tests during design review phase and reduce time, costs of product development cycle while meeting the user requirements.

In the last two decades a huge number of interactive and collaborative applications of Virtual Environments for designing products has been proposed. Such applications have been recommended as tools to implement Human Centered Design Approach in experiments where potential users are involved in participatory design sessions before going for production. In this kind of experiments, we observe that users are mainly involved in the validation of solutions previously elaborated by designers while in the last decade the most innovative approach in the creation of solutions seems to be moving from a user centered design to a co-design or co-creation process. Thus, it is essential to have a platform where the elements of co-creation can be fulfilled in building a successful project. The purpose of this paper is to outline the concept of cocreation and the significance of co-creation platforms alongside of proposing innovative tools for building the co-creative environments. The paper aims to layout a classification of the Extended Reality (XR) tools currently available and of their functionality as valuable means to actually embed co-design and cocreation concepts in Virtual Environments evaluating the advantages that this can bring to Industry through field studies. A review of innovative solutions like Virtual, Augmented and Mixed reality technologies is examined and drawn towards the requirements of the concept through a literature research. Additionally, a co-creative environment for designing aircraft cabin interiors is conceived and discussed a with company representative.