Frontiers in Immersive Technologies for Design: Understanding Human Factors in Built Environments

Michael J Proulx^1*Arzu Coltekin^2*

• ¹Department of Psychology, University of Bath, Bath, Bath, United Kingdom
• ²University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Windisch, Switzerland

Immersive technologies allow for the collection of objective data from typically subjective experiences, by offering fully controllable environments that enable conducting controlled experiments, while still eliciting an arguably ecologically valid experience for the participant. Given the above, the scope of the present Research Topic is to highlight novel uses of immersive technologies for better understanding human factors in built environments. Contributors address themes from traditional architectural validation such as spatial and social density, and navigation-related experiments, as well as aspects from health and cognitive psychology, interior design, new forms of work, and workplace productivity. In addition, this Research Topic contains investigations into individual differences, such as culture, personality, and social economics. Specifically, the Research Topic collection contains the following contributions:Without taking individual and group differences into account, one can argue that we can never achieve universal design. In the perspective article "How interior design responds to neurodiversity: implementing wearable technologies in neurodesign processes," Kwon et al. discuss the benefits and challenges of using virtual environments and wearable technologies in interior design and related fields. They argue that neurodiversity plays a key role in the invisible human-environment interaction, and that measuring, analyzing, and understanding affective, perceptual, and cognitive experiences is a challenging process. After a review of the relevant work spanning from theories e.g., phenomenology, and practical implementations of e.g., eye tracking in VR to study cognitive differences in spatial perception including dementia, authors contextualize a novel process model in the context of their work, Participatory Neurodesign (PND) framework from wayfinding literature, along with other opportunities for neurodesign research.A social science perspective in technology development can provide crucial insights. In "The praxis of radical placemaking," Gonsalves et al. propose a new digital placemaking design practice called Radical Placemaking, involving "marginalized bodies highlighting social issues through the ephemerality and spectacularity of digital technologies in public spaces" based on a 3-year design study. Authors demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach through three design interventions (participatory action research, slow design, and open pedagogies) and offer a conceptual framework with nine key strategies for codesigning within the triad of people-place-technology.As XR technology advances in scope, wearables (XR googles) are getting lighter, and more and more of them are coupled with artificial intelligence (AI), many questions about security and privacy are raised. Such concerns warrant questions around technology acceptance. Can we transition to these new technologies without creating an "ad nightmare" around us? In "Evaluation of the extended TAM for digital signage augmented roadshow (DiSAR) using PLS-SEM," Tan et al. propose an extended Technology Acceptance Model incorporating System Quality, Perceived Interactivity, and Perceived Enjoyment as antecedents. They empirically analyze the performance of this model in modeling the user acceptance of 203 participants, and identify key factors influencing the user acceptance, in a Digital Signage Augmented Roadshow. Their findings show a nuanced relationship between that System Quality and Perceived Interactivity have a significant relationship with the Perceived Ease of Use of DiSAR, Perceived Enjoyment has a significant relationship with the Perceived Usefulness of DiSAR; demonstrating that the rethinking classical TAM with new dimensions can reveal new correlations that are informative in designing immersive content.Utilizing XR, especially VR as a laboratory, is an attractive concept due to its affordance of control. In "The effects of social density, spatial density, noise, and office views on perceived personal space in the virtual workplace," Jicol et al. investigate how different variables influence Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) and perceived personal space in shared office environments. They employ virtual reality to simulate shared and single occupancy offices and devise a novel measure of personal space estimation. Authors demonstrate that "participants experienced greater perceived personal space when (1) in a sparsely populated rather than a dense office, (2) in a private office rather than an open plan office, and (3) having any view outside of the office", and the fact that they can demonstrate this stands as a testimonial that the changes in virtual space creates a relative difference in people's reactions, and VR can be a viable tool to study research topics such as personal space.Complementary to Jicol et al.'s study, finally, in "Differences in office-based personal space perception between British and Korean populations," Richardson et al. present a study that takes also a cultural view into account and compare the perception of personal space in South Korean and United Kingdom workplaces. They employ virtual reality to simulate shared and single occupancy offices and obtain personal space estimations using a retractable/extendable virtual disc around the participant, use the disk size as a measure, and compare it to the results of a questionnaire. While participants in either cultural group "perceived personal space (1) when in a sparse rather than dense office and (2) having a view of the city outside the office", British participants had significantly higher personal space estimations in single occupancy offices than in shared offices while Korean participants did not. This study further demonstrates that VR can be a medium to examine cultural differences and attitudes towards space. Richardson et al. state that " future research would benefit from comparing VR to actual workspaces", which is also a valid statement for Jicol et al. study, even though relative differences give interesting new information also within a VR study.Taken together, these articles in our Research Topic demonstrate the potential of immersive technologies to transform the field of design and highlight the importance of considering human factors in built environments. We believe immersive technologies, specifically XR coupled with artificial intelligence (AI) will have a transformative effect in all fields related to design, including the studies of built environments. As we continue to develop and refine these technologies, it is essential that we prioritize research on their impact on human behavior, cognition, and emotion.