Impact of mixed reality implementation on early-stage interactive product design process. (2nd January 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Maurya, Santosh; Mougenot, Céline; Takeda, Yukio
• Is Part Of: Journal of engineering design. Volume 32:Number 1(2021)
• Page Start: 1
• Page End: 27
• Publication Date: 2021-01-02
• Subjects: Interaction design -- concept design tool -- product behaviour -- creativity -- mixed reality prototyping; Engineering design -- Periodicals; Design, Industrial -- Periodicals; Industrial engineering -- Periodicals; 620.0042
• DOI: 10.1080/09544828.2020.1851662
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0954-4828

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article proposes a novel approach towards quick concept generation and validation of interactive-product behaviours. When designing for user-product interactions, designers have to consider spatial and behavioural elements besides form/tangible aspects and perform quick-validation of the generated concepts often done through functional prototyping at later design stages. As a result, the designed-outcomes often depend on parameters like designer's familiarity with the design tools used, the level of fidelity achieved while prototyping and the frequency of design-iterations, limiting a thorough-exploration of concept-space and outcomes' creativity at the early design stages. This research targets such dependencies and non-creative hindrances at concept generation stage through a Mixed Reality implementation. This work establishes requirements for creating a suitable design-tool and presents a proof-of-concept use-case. A design task to ideate, create and revise concepts of playful product-behaviours swiftly was performed to assess the impact of the implemented method. In an empirical study, a broader exploration of solution-space and an overall improvement in creative output-flow was observed when compared to the design-outcomes in the traditional storyboard design approach. Though the implemented design-tool's unfamiliarity and capability presented a challenge, a significant increase in usage of iterative concept-design behaviour was observed throughout the study.