Grant: Alliance Grants

Engineering design is an iterative process whose success relies on effective communication with clients to understand their needs. A complete design process requires multiple design prototype reviews by the client. With advances in virtual reality (VR), most design prototype reviews are shifting towards "digital prototype" reviews, especially in the early phases of design. This reduces the time and cost required for prototyping, while allowing a way for high-fidelity design assessments even in early design stages. As the VR technology evolves, new research directions in VR-based design review continues to emerge. Presently, the use of wearable sensors for face-tracking or heart rate monitoring are becoming standard in VR devices. Such sensor-based assessments can be used to infer intentions and emotions of users in VR environment. The objective of this research is to investigate the application of such sensor-based behavioral assessments in VR-based design review, explore how they can improve the understanding of client needs and help with informing design specifications and design validation, and ultimately, improve the efficiency of design process. Similar sensor-based assessments are being studied in the realm of neuromarketing to understand consumer behaviour. Therefore, we intend to collaborate with a neuromarketing research group from the Middle State Tennessee University to explore this new research direction. The proposed research has the potential to improve design cycle efficiency which will be extremely beneficial to many Canadian industry sectors including manufacturing, aerospace, and automotive.