Collaboration is becoming important in design process today. Design was for increasing the efficiency of industry in the past, and the role of design has been changed as the society has developed and as we have had various kinds of needs. The problems of design are getting complex. In order to tackle such problems, the importance of collaboration has increased.
In this research, we focused on using VR as a design tool in collaboration, and this paper aims to clarify the possibility of VR which stands for virtual reality in the collaborative design process. We used HMD, which is one of the most famous tools for immersive virtual reality. It can work effectively in design process because it will help to imagine the designed space for many people who join the process and are not necessarily good at imagining the designed space.
Design experiment was conducted in order to examine the effect of immersive VR on design process. 12 participants were divided into 6 pairs, and one person who is studying architecture in each group works as a designer, and the other works as a client. Through three critics in one experiment, a house was designed.
Three preliminary consideration were conducted in order to analyze the result. First consideration was about virtual reality. Through the consideration, it is examined that the virtual reality experience can be regarded as substantially same as the real space experience, and it was also considered that HMD can give users such virtual experience of space. Second consideration was about experiencing the space with body sensations. The importance of the experience is considered through referring the definition of virtual reality and considering the relationship human body and space. Thirdly, it is pointed out that the move in the VR space is an important aspect of experiencing space.
We focused on the design process of pair 1 and pair 6, because they include some noticeable scenes which should be discussed deeply, and three scenes are picked up and discussed. In first scene, we can see that it became easier for users to give feedback to designed architecture based on their own taste or needs. In second scene, it has seen that user’s hidden needs were revealed and the user’s frame of needs has changed through the experience of VR space. In third scene, we can see that it became easier for users to recognize the complex relationship of designed spaces by walking around and looking around in the VR space.
It is concluded that immersive VR is the design tool which makes it easier for users to imagine the real space, to join the discussion more actively, to make the frame of user change and to recognize the relationship of multiple spaces through the move in the virtual space.
