A Virtual Reality Environment Supporting the Design and Evaluation of Interior Spaces

Interior space design is a collaborative process for deriving different proposals on the content and structure of any type of interior space. This process is partially supported by mainstream CAD systems which are not designed for that particular task but for general engineeringor architectural-design development. Although, several add-on modules have been developed for supporting mainly arctitectural design, still, significant effort is required in order to employ a CAD system due to their increased requiremenets and slow learning curve. However, if end-users (e.g., consumers) are to be directly involved in the process, new environments that emphasize on usability and intuitive interactions have to be introduced. VR technology can help in this direction as it provides the theories and tools to construct and manipulate 3D spaces using a ‘real-world’ metaphor. Desktop virtual environments can serve as a means to implement design applications for the end-users. In this paper we propose a methodology for designing and implementing virtual reality applications to support the process of interior space design focusing on usability for non-expert users. We present a prototype implementation of the proposed methodology and an informal user-centered evaluation of the environment.