TVTM: a case study and analysis of 3 virtual representations to support remote collaboration within the fashion industry

This paper investigates whether or not virtual representations can support remote collaboration within the fashion industry using a Textual Virtual Tangible Multi-touch (TVTM) system. The software interface for the TVTM system was developed from the results and feedback from a previous study. Two different types of multi-touch technology were deployed for the case study. The paper then covers the nature of the user testing and how it addresses the hypothesis developed from our pilot study, and team expectations of the participants’ selections of a variety of methods to complete their task. The paper presents the data we collected from the user testing including correlation between various different representations, time taken to finish the task and the difficulty ratings for the three levels of representation. The paper concludes by validating our hypothesis against our findings, and looks at some improvements to the current system and some potential features that might be considered for our next prototype.