Research Design Connections: Virtual Office Research

Latini, Di Giuseppe, and D’Orazio have determined that research outcomes obtained in virtual reality settings are useful in real world applications.  They conducted research in real and immersive office spaces finding “No significant results variation between real and virtual offices. . . . participants performed one test session in a real or a virtual room, three cognitive tasks and surveys (on immersivity, cybersickness, comfort, and intention of interaction). The validation process was addressed by evaluating the adequacy of VR in representing real-life scenarios and the benchmark of results. Findings confirmed the ecological validity of the model by an excellent sense of presence, graphical satisfaction, involvement, realism and low cybersickness levels. The absence of significant differences between the results on comfort, productivity, and behaviour, collected in the real and virtual settings, supported the criterion validity. Results highlighted the potentialities of applying VR to support a user-centred design and investigations on multi-domain comfort.”

Arianna Latini, Elisa Di Giuseppe, and Marco D’Orazio.  2023. “Immersive Virtual vs Real Office Environments:  A Validation Study for Productivity, Comfort and Behavioural Research.”  Building and Environment, vol. 230, 109996, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2023.109996

Sally Augustin, PhD, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com).  Research Design Connections reports on research conducted by social and physical scientists that designers can apply in practice.  Insights derived from recent studies are integrated with classic, still relevant findings in concise, powerful articles.  Topics covered range from the cognitive, emotional, and physiological implications of sensory and other physical experiences to the alignment of culture, personality, and design, among others.   Information, in everyday language, is shared in a monthly subscription newsletter, an archive of thousands of published articles, and a free daily blog.   Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage:  Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research:  Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012).  She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.