ITcon Vol. 22, pg. 305-321, http://www.itcon.org/2017/16

Supporting design reviews with pre-meeting virtual reality environments

submitted:June 2017
revised:October 2017
published:December 2017
editor(s):Amor R.
authors:Marc van den Berg, PhD candidate
Department of Construction Management & Engineering, University of Twente
m.c.vandenberg@utwente.nl

Timo Hartmann, Professor
Department of Civil Systems, Institute for Civil Engineering, Technical University of Berlin
timo.hartmann@tu-berlin.de

Robin de Graaf, Assistant professor
Department of Construction Management & Engineering, University of Twente
r.s.degraaf@utwente.nl
summary:The purpose of this paper is to explore how design reviews can be supported with pre-meeting virtual reality environments. Previous research has not systematically investigated how virtual environments can be used to communicate the design intent (to clients) and to communicate feedback (to design professionals) in advance of review meetings within real-world projects. A prototypical virtual environment that enables clients to individually navigate through and comment on a design-in-progress, aimed to be used before a review meeting, was therefore studied in two typical architectural and engineering design projects. A pattern-matching strategy was applied for the qualitative analysis of the data collected. It is concluded that theoretical expectations and pragmatic realities about the support of pre-meeting virtual reality environments for design review match (yet in varying degrees) in the areas of: exploration from a user perspective, participation in solution-finding and feedback on a design proposal. This paper thereby offers an in-depth understanding about the potential of virtual environment usages in advance of review meetings, which may help design professionals to make a more informed choice about how and why to support design reviews with pre-meeting virtual reality environments.
keywords:Design management, Design review, Information transferability, Pattern-matching, Virtual environment
full text: (PDF file, 1.064 MB)
citation:van den Berg M, Hartmann T, de Graaf, R (2017). Supporting design reviews with pre-meeting virtual reality environments, ITcon Vol. 22, pg. 305-321, https://www.itcon.org/2017/16