Analysis of the Influence of the Presentation Medium on the Evaluation of Virtual Prototypes Using Eye-tracking Technology and the Semantic Differential
Product evaluation throughout the design process is a fundamental task to ensure product success. Virtual prototyping is displacing physical prototyping for product evaluation due to its lower cost and flexibility to easily generate design alternatives (colors, textures, shapes). The thesis provides a deeper understanding of the influence of the presentation medium on product evaluation. The semantic differential technique was applied in to obtain the consumers’ subjective impression when they observed furniture scenes under two different presentation mediums. High-quality realistic renderings were displayed on a computer screen equipped with an eye-tracker. The same scenes were observed by the same users (repeated measures experimental design) with a virtual reality headset equipped with an integrated eye-tracker (HP Reverb G2 Omnicept). Equivalent areas/volumes of interest were defined to calculate the eye- tracking metric dwell time. Statistical analyses then compared dwell times and values of semantic scales in the 2D and VR conditions to determine if the medium of presentation influenced them.
The experimental data obtained in the thesis confirmed that both the consumer’s subjective impression measured through bipolar pairs and the level of confidence in its assessment was influenced by the visual medium. However, the level of confidence in the assessment of a semantic scale of a product presented on VR was not affected by the sense of presence.
The amount of time (dwell time) that subjects spend looking at a specific product on a joint or individual visualization were influenced by the visual medium.
History
Degree Type
- Master of Science
Department
- Engineering Technology
Campus location
- West Lafayette