Study results: the use of virtual environments for product design

Today, many product development organizations are investigating the use of multi-functional teams coupled with emerging interactive virtual environment technologies to create more robust, collaborative virtual design environments. Within these environments design team mates could simultaneously enter a virtual product design, and jointly evaluate design issues, ideas, and parameters-each from their own experience, perspective, viewpoint and functional responsibility. However, the proliferation and variety of commercially available virtual environment systems has complicated system selection. This paper presents results of a study that investigated the use of four commercial visual displays on the design review process. Study results indicated that the sense of presence experienced while conducting a design review plays an important role in improving design review practices and that some devices are considerably better than others.