抄録
Manufactures in developed countries have made efforts on sustainable global production such as the development of eco-products for developing countries. However, industrial products designed in developed countries are not always acceptable for developing countries. One of the reasons is differences in culture, social contexts and lifestyles between them. It is important to understand such local information and to reflect it in product design. The authors has proposed “locally-oriented design” as a design methodology focusing on local specific needs and constraints. In order to support the process of the locally-oriented product design, this paper proposes a virtualized reality environment in which a designer evaluates the design from a holistic viewpoint including the local information of the area. This quasi-realistic environment composed of omni-directional images captured from multiple viewpoints in a real world where the target product is installed and used. The designer can move and look around freely in the immersive environment through a head-mounted display, and evaluate the design of products based on operational burden of users. The effectiveness of the system is demonstrated on a washing machine installed in a house of Vietnam in a case study.
