Virtual Collaborative Design Environment: Supporting Seamless Integration of Multitouch Table and Immersive VR
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 146, Issue 12
Abstract
Throughout the design of a new building it is essential that all involved stakeholders understand, communicate, participate, and collaborate with each other to acquire a high-quality result. To support these shared and creative design processes, this paper presents the design and evaluation of virtual collaborative design environment (ViCoDE)—a new collaborative design system. ViCoDE features seamless integration of several immersive VR systems and a multitouch table that facilitates collaborative and interactive design work with immediate feedback. The evaluation of the system has been done during two real-life collaborative design workshops in a context of designing new healthcare environments. The results show that the VR system and multitouch table complement each other very well by facilitating both collaborative, and individual design spaces—and that it fosters better understanding, participation, communication, knowledge sharing, and collaboration among the different stakeholders. The contribution is two-fold: presentation of a new collaborative design system and the evaluation of its use in a real-life design context, which demonstrate how these new technology-based workshops may facilitate design management.
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Data Availability Statement
Some raw data used in this study were collected during video recording of workshops. These data are sensitive to sharing without the approval from the participants in this study and could be provided with restrictions from the corresponding author by request.
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Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 146 • Issue 12 • December 2020
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© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 17, 2020
Accepted: Jun 25, 2020
Published online: Sep 23, 2020
Published in print: Dec 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Feb 23, 2021
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