hi my name is Lulwah Al Barrak and I'll be presenting using virtual
reality and co-design to study the design of large-scale shape changing interfaces
large-scale shape changing interfaces such as Furniture sculptures floors and walls can be
promising at enhancing our quality of life within buildings shape changing walls in particular can
change to provide additional Furniture display information as well as to offer navigational
support within buildings imagine for example entering a building with shape-changing walls
these walls can guide you through the space by making corridors wider or creating a wave light
pattern that moves in a specific direction. although such large scale shape changing
interfaces can have many potentials, designing and building them can be very challenging.
To examine their design, prior work have paved the way and proposed to use a platforms that do
not require building physical prototypes such as 2D videos and projected augmented reality
in this work we build on and extend prior work by proposing to use Virtual Reality which could offer
a more immersive experience that would allow the examining how shape-changing goals affect people's
perceptions. In addition in order to enhance our understanding of how these technologies
can be designed to become less intrusive and more ambient we explore this in our study
Therefore in this work we designed a study to answer the following research questions:
first how do people perceive different types of shape changing walls.
Second how can we design shape changing walls with ambient qualities. Third can
VR be used as a platform to facilitate the design process of large-scale shape changing interfaces
To examine these questions we conducted an online study consisting of three successive
Parts a VR experience, co-design activities and an interview. This was done with 18 participants.
We used VR to explain the complex concept of shape changing walls and to understand how
people perceive them we particularly developed living building which is a
mobile VR app that uses cardboard viewers to explore different shape-changing wall designs
after the VR experience we engaged potential users in co-design activities to explore how
participants understand and use parameters of shape change that they encountered in VR
and then how can they use it to design non-intrusive and ambient shape changing walls
finally we conducted interviews to examine how our approach in
to designing shape changing goals can facilitate the design process
In our study we examined a number of shape change parameters including type of change speed
scale interaction notification level and abstraction level
we analysed the data collected from the VR experience qualitatively using thematic
analysis. In the VR experience participants showed a wide range of emotional reactions
these reactions range ranged from a pleasant to unpleasant emotions with high and low emotional
arousal for example participant number two expressed how the volume type of change made
her feel more energetic when it was on a fast speed and with one wall activated: it makes me
feel like a bit more energetic. In the volume type of change participants felt overwhelmed
and anxious about by threatening and the scary wall that's definitely feeling more
threatening a bit overwhelmed I guess yeah and potentially a little bit confused as well
in addition participants described the affordances of shape changing worlds
for example some participants stated that the cubes type of change affords certain actions
such as sitting and creating stairs and even to be used for games I feel if they stop moving if
they come forward and stop moving it's kind of providing affordance for people to sit on it.
Rather than stating affordances of action possibilities participants reported that
shape-changing goals that shape changing goals were providing and inviting affordance
for instance a participant number three described um that the cubes type of change invites playful
interactions: seems to kind of like invites a bit more playing with them or something
Exploring shape-changing rules in VR have resulted in a number of pleasant sensory
Illusions including cross-modal illusions that relate directly to the body and illusions that
relate to the body's relation with the surrounding space participants reported
a number of cross-modal illusions that relate to the body such as hearing sounds changes in
body temperature and changes in body weight. For instance participants mentioned that they started
to hear sounds and noises as they were looking at the shape-changing walls I'm getting a bit of
what is it called when you have a one sense feeding you to another one into another one
I feel like I'm hearing it as it moving as is moving quickly I always feel like I can
hear it I noticed it a bit on the three walls and fast but much more with the single wall
now moving to our findings in the co-design activities so the differences between the designs
made in the design activities were examined, analysed and categorised. The categorisation
of the shape changing wall parameters can help designers in understanding how each parameter
relates to intrusiveness and hence make design choices based on whether they need a more or a
less intrusive designs of shape changing walls for example with the type of change parameter to
make the design less intrusive participants changed the type of their initial and the
type of change in their initial design and used curvature and holes types, however participants
change the type of change in their initial design to amplitude to make it more intrusive.
With the speed parameter participants reduced the speed of the shape changing wall design to make it
less intrusive and increase the speed of the shape changing wall design to make it more intrusive.
With the scale parameter participants reduced the number of Walls to one
shape changing wall to make the design less intrusive and increase the number
of volts or to make it to make the shape changing goals more intrusive
with the interaction parameter participants used a direct and indirect interaction
and reported that direct and indirect interaction can create less intrusive
designs while no interaction can result in more intrusive designs.
With the notification level parameter participants suggested reducing the
notification level to make the design of the walls less intrusive
whereas with the abstraction level parameter participants increased the abstraction level
to make the design less intrusive and decreased the abstraction level to make it more intrusive
participants also reflected on the overall experience many of them found it engaging
fun and enjoyable they also reported that our approach helps in understanding the concept of
shape-changing goals and the vocabulary needed for design they also reported that it helps in
understanding how the different shape changing World types affect emotions and how they consider
it how they consider that if you're in the design activities it also provided them with a concrete
experience that was important for the design phase it helped them in in all participants
also mentioned that it helps in inspiring the design outcomes and design of future buildings
thanks for listening