A Usability Study of an Immersive Virtual Reality Platform for Building Design Review: Considerations on Human Factors and User Interface

A good level of understanding of design specifications by all stakeholders is the initial and a fundamental step towards effective communication in a design review setting. Certainly, one of the goals of designers during the review process is to ensure the design solutions are well understood. Recently, virtual reality (VR) systems have been adopted in an effort to improve this shared understanding of ongoing designs. However, the effectiveness and suitability of such systems to design review practices has not been rigorously tested yet. In this context, this paper describes a systematic usability study consisting of a mix of empirical and inspection-based methods (user testing and heuristics evaluation) that aimed to investigate the implications and usability issues from the adoption of an immersive virtual reality system in design review. The usability testing comprised the evaluation of three main aspects from the user standpoint: users' cognitive performance, users' interaction performance, and the system suitability to design review practices. The experiment consisted of expert designers performing tasks within the virtual environment and then responding to objective and subjective questions about their understanding of the virtual representation, their overall experience using the platform, and their personal assessment on heuristics regarding the system's user interface. The usability evaluation provided evidence that the immersive virtual reality system is indeed efficient in communicating design solutions, which could improve communication quality during design review meetings. However, the heuristics evaluation (alone) revealed that the system has significant usability flaws and still requires improvements in its user interface. Nevertheless, since issues were rated as "minor usability problems," improvements to the system are very likely. In light of the evaluation findings, the last part of this article discusses the extent to which the immersive virtual reality system could benefit the decision-making in design review, and provides some insights on potential improvements.