Designing shared virtual environments for social interaction (original) (raw)
Related papers
Designing Virtual Environments for Social Interaction
2000
The Distributed Legible City (DLC) is an interactive multi-media art installation enabling a number of 'cyclists' to participate in a shared virtual environment. In this paper we describe the evolution of the DLC guided by ethnographic study. We consider the implications and problems associated with designing a virtual environment where the requirements to 'support social interaction' are ambiguous and open ended. Although our own work is but exploratory, we identify trans-situational features of social interaction which may be oriented to and explicated in other settings in designing virtual environments to support social interaction.
My Ideal City (Mic): Virtual Environments to Design the Future Town
The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, 2012
MIC is an EU funded project to explore the use of shared virtual environments as part of a public discussion on the issues of building the city of the future. An interactive exploration of four european cities-in the digital city models were translated urban places, family problems and citizens wishes-is a chance to see them in different ways and from different points of view, to imagine new scenarios to overcome barriers and stereotypes no longer effective. This paper describes the process from data to visualization of virtual cities and, in detail, the project of two interactive digital model (Trento and Lisbon).
Architectural Science Review, 2020
Regarding laypeople's active participation with artefacts in the early stage of urban design, there is a certain difference between conventional urban design process and participatory urban design process. The design artefacts used in the conventional urban design process do not allow laypeople to take part actively in the early stages of the design process. Similarly, in the participatory design process, the generated design ideas remain hidden in assumption due to the lack of associated information of the artefacts and the participants perform as individual actors. The research speculates that a virtual immersive participatory design instrument can reduce the gap, where the participants can act together as a unit to produce authentic design outcomes. An Immersive Virtual Environment (IVE) assisted design experiment setup has developed for laypeople to engage in a shared and enhanced communicative platform. The article reports the procedure of developing the instrument and discusses them in terms of design communication, participation and expert's role. It concludes with a reflection of how laypeople as co-designers can use IVE instruments to design their neighbourhood meaningfully. ARTICLE HISTORY
Virtual environments as medium for laypeople to communicate and collaborate in urban design
Architectural Science Review, 2020
Regarding laypeople's active participation with artefacts in the early stage of urban design, there is a certain difference between conventional urban design process and participatory urban design process. The design artefacts used in the conventional urban design process do not allow laypeople to take part actively in the early stages of the design process. Similarly, in the participatory design process, the generated design ideas remain hidden in assumption due to the lack of associated information of the artefacts and the participants perform as individual actors. The research speculates that a virtual immersive participatory design instrument can reduce the gap, where the participants can act together as a unit to produce authentic design outcomes. An Immersive Virtual Environment (IVE) assisted design experiment setup has developed for laypeople to engage in a shared and enhanced communicative platform. The article reports the procedure of developing the instrument and discusses them in terms of design communication, participation and expert's role. It concludes with a reflection of how laypeople as co-designers can use IVE instruments to design their neighbourhood meaningfully.
The development of the Virtual City: A user centred approach
… Conference on Disability, Virtual …, 1998
This paper will develop the theme of the importance of community based involvement in the development of virtual learning environments (VLEs) for people with a learning disability. It is being presented alongside two other papers, one by the User Group, the other by the Testing Group, describing the design, testing and distribution of the Virtual City. This set of VLEs comprise a computer aided learning (CAL) tool to teach independent living skills to people with a learning disability. Our presentation will demonstrate the involvement of users in each of the stages of development of the Virtual City, and the benefits of this partnership, as opposed to a more tokenistic involvement.
Virtual Environments as Medium for Laypeople's Communication and Collaboration in Urban Design
PhD Thesis-Victoria University of Wellington, 2020
The distance between urban design processes and outcomes and their communication to stakeholders and citizens are often significant. Urban designers use a variety of tools to bridge this gap. Each tool often places high demands on the audience, and each through inherent characteristics and affordances, introduces possible failures to understand the design ideas, thus imposing a divergence between the ideas, their communication and the understandings. Urban design is a hugely complex activity influenced by numerous factors. The design exploration process may follow established design traditions. In all instances, the medium in which the exploration takes place affects the understanding by laypeople. Design tools are chosen, in part, to facilitate the design process. Most urban design community engagement does not use Virtual Environments (VE) as a means of communication and participation in the early stage of the design generation. There has been little research on how the use of VE for urban design can engage laypeople as contributors to the design process. It has been suggested that VE instruments can allow laypeople to express, explore and convey their imagination more easily. The very different nature of perceptual understanding of VE and its capability to produce instant 3D artefacts with design actions may allow laypeople to generate meaningful design ideas. An experiment setup has developed to leverage laypeople in authentic design collaboration. This thesis examines in the context of New Zealand’s National Science Challenge ‘Building Better Homes, Towns and Cities’ the drivers of change that contribute to the shaping of places, development and design of future neighbourhoods. A series of experiments have been conducted in the site of a neighbourhood to investigate the relative effectiveness of immersive VE to facilitate people in collaborative urban design. The findings support the hypothesis that VE with the generation of 3D artefacts enhances design communication for laypeople to design an urban form for their neighbourhood. The thesis concludes by discussing how New Zealand’s ii future neighbourhoods can be shaped and developed with VE assisted participatory urban design.
Designing Collaborative Virtual Environments Based on Real Spaces to Promote Community Interaction
2003
Members of a community may not know each other in real life. The design of CVE in which members are known and there is interaction in a real space is different to the traditional design of CVE. It should consider the real location of each resource, appropriated awareness and communication strategies, and the human-human and human-resource relations. Our University Department was selected as an example organizational unit for experimentation. We start with the real physical environment and we design a CVE to provide new collaboration features to people working in the unit and those who will visit it. The advantages of the approach are many. First, people are familiar with the basic physical environment. Second, some activities requiring physical presence can be done with virtual presence, enabling more convenient ways to work for employees. Third, new opportunities for collaborative work appear as it is easy to do them with the proposed CVE. Finally, the approach is extensible, since new features can be added. In this paper we present the approach and the design of the proposed CVE.
Development and evaluation of the virtual city
… Journal of Virtual …, 1999
This paper describes the initial development of the Virtual Life Skills project. A user-centred design approach was developed to build virtual environments (VEs) intended to provide a practice arena for skill learning in children and adults with learning disabilities. The context for learning these skills is a computer generated model of a city in which users have freedom to explore different buildings and practice a variety of everyday living skills.
Designing Virtual Environments to Support Cooperation in the Real World
Virtual Reality, 2002
Much of the current research in the design of virtual environments is centred on laboratory prototypes and emphasis is placed on supporting cooperation within the virtual world itself. By way of contrast, this paper places an emphasis upon the development of virtual environments that support cooperation within the real world.