What are the Challenges and Enabling Technologies to Implement the Do-It-Together Approach Enhanced by Social Media, its Benefits and Drawbacks?

Inspired by the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) movement, the Do-It-Together (DIT) collaborative approach was successfully trialed in 2018, hence opening the door to the application of User Driven Innovation for realizing product individualization. In the meantime, other megatrends like digitization, social media, sustainability, the circular economy, and collaborative consumption have pushed toward a renewed DIT approach for tackling social and societal issues. This article reports on an exploratory study dedicated to the identification of challenges and enabling technologies to implement the DIT approach, as well as its benefits and drawbacks. This study is based on an extensive literature review that allowed us to identify 162 articles resulting in 38 most relevant selected articles and seven Product Life-Cycle (PLC) stages. Based on these PLC stages, all identified DIT challenges, benefits and drawbacks were collected from previous empirical work described in the selected articles. In terms of findings, relevant DIT challenges, benefits and drawbacks are consolidated in distinct tables with proper references. Regarding the enabling technologies for DIT implementation, only immersive technologies at the earlier PLC stage are addressed. The implementation analysis within other PLC stages and enabling technologies like Additive Manufacturing, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and IoT have to be carried out in order to identify their particular benefits and drawbacks; however, this analysis is left to future work. This study has also revealed a lack of empirical studies addressing negative impacts while there is a plethora of published studies focusing solely on positive impacts

Environmental Inequalities in Flood Exposure: A Matter of Scale

peer reviewedStudies on inequalities in exposure to flood risk have explored whether population of a lower socio-economic status are more exposed to flood hazard. While evidence exist for coastal flooding, little is known on inequalities for riverine floods. This paper addresses two issues: (1) is the weakest population, in socio-economic terms, more exposed to flood hazard, considering different levels of exposure to hazard? (2) Is the exposure to flood risk homogeneous across the territory, considering different scales of analysis? An analysis of the exposure of inhabitants of Liège province to flood risk was conducted at different scales (province, districts, and municipalities), considering three levels of exposure to flood hazard (level 1- low hazard, level 3- high hazard), and five socio-economic classes (class 1-poorest, class 5-wealthiest households). Our analysis confirms that weaker populations (classes 2 and 3) are usually more exposed to flood hazards than the wealthiest (classes 4 and 5). Still it should be stressed that the most precarious households (class 1) are less exposed than low to medium-range ones (classes 2 and 3). Further on the relation between socio-economic status and exposure to flood hazard varies along the spatial scale considered. At the district level, it appears that classes 4 and 5 are most exposed to flood risk in some peripheral areas. In municipalities located around the center of the city, differences of exposure to risk are not significant

Is virtual reality so user-friendly for non-designers in early design activities? Comparing skills needed to traditional sketching versus virtual reality sketching

Virtual reality (VR) sketching has many advantages for product design and tends to be more and more used among designers and non-designers (end-users). Nevertheless, few studies have focused on the skills needed to use VR sketching for non-designers especially VR novices in VR software. This study focuses on identifying the cognitive impact of VR sketching compared to traditional sketching on VR expert and VR novice in an experimental setting. Thirty-one participants composed of VR experts (N = 15) and VR novices (N = 16) completed a mental rotation test and then performed one traditional paper and pencil sketching task and two VR sketching tasks. We also measured the participants’ movements when using the VR sketching. Results show that VR experts perform better than VR novices in VR sketching because training is an essential element for the quality of traditional and VR sketching. Nevertheless, VR novices with previous training in traditional drawing and/or high mental rotation skills will be able to produce good-quality sketches. In addition, the results show that users moving more in the immersive environment performed better quality sketches if the drawing requires more complex shapes. Our results suggest that VR sketching can be complex to use for a part of the population that may be end-users, especially for those with little experience in traditional and VR sketching and with poor visuospatial abilities. We, therefore, advise to check the non-designers’ prior skills, otherwise, it will be necessary to train these users in VR sketching

Why does the quality of sketches in virtual reality depend so much on individuals? Analysis and identification of factors based on laboratory and field experiments

Virtual reality (VR) sketching tends to be democratized in the early stages of design for several reasons (e.g., improved creativity). Nevertheless, our field studies and the scientific literature identified some constraints to the use of VR sketching such as the low quality of the sketches impacting the acceptance of the design tool for the future users. The objective of our study is better understand them to improve the quality of user sketches. Thirty-one participants completed questionnaires (VR and drawing experience, visuo-spatial skills, usability) and performed 2 VR sketching tasks. Sketch quality was evaluated using a multifactorial approach (volume, proportion, fidelity). The results showed that each skill (visuo-spatial abilities, drawing experience and spatial inspection) has a specific impact on some factors. We detailed the results and proposed recommendations for improving the use of the sketching software and sketches quality.Projet Européen INEDIT (Grant agreement N 869952

Innovative Process for Furniture Design: Contributions of 3D Scan and Virtual Reality

Technological development offers new opportunities that could change design processes. The present study explores the possibilities of technologies like virtual reality and 3D scan in the furniture design process. For this purpose, a co-creation process with help of new technologies was carried out from initial ideation to 3D modelling. Each tool has been characterized in terms of user experience measured by questionnaire. This research validates a design process of furniture based on immersive technology and provide some recommendations for the implementation and improvement of this process

3DLive: A multi-modal sensing platform allowing tele-immersive sports applications

http://www.eusipco2014.org/program/3DLive project is developing a user-driven mixed reality platform, intended for augmented sports. Using latest sens-ing techniques, 3DLive will allow remote users to share a three-dimensional sports experience, interacting with each other in a mixed reality space. This paper presents the multi-modal sensing technologies used in the platform. 3DLive aims at delivering a high sense of tele-immersion among remote users, regardless of whether they are indoors or outdoors, in the context of augmented sports. In this paper, functional and technical details of the first prototype of the jogging scenario are presented, while a clear separation between indoor and outdoor users is given, since different technologies need to be employed for each case.This work was supported by the EU funded project 3DLive, GA 31848

An investigation of design in virtual reality across the variation of training degree and visual realism

Research showed that immersive technologies can significantly improve the design process. However, it is important to consider the ease of implementation of solutions (e.g. price, simplicity). Therefore, the objective of this study was to analyze the uses of two types of virtual environments that are relatively simple to implement: a basic model of a room and its 3D scan. Participants made sketches using a virtual reality application, provided by the instructors, in each of the two different VR environments. The sketches are proposals to a furniture co-creation task. Results indicate a better co-creation process during the second session than during the first, which reveals that training is an important criterion in this case. Furthermore, co-creation is felt to be better in the case of the modeled place compared to the 3D scan. This result could be due to the presence of useless virtual objects that can cause a distraction to the participants. These results are discussed from an applicative standpoint.Projet INEDIT de la Commission européenn

3D-LIVE: a design and evaluation framework for a tele-immersive mixed reality platform

Tele-immersive, mixed reality interactive systems bring remote users together to share a common experience in an environment that synthesizes aspects of the real and virtual worlds. The 3D-LIVE platform is an example of one such system that synthesizes 3D models, audio, motion capture and activity recognition from a number of geographically separated sources into a single gaming environment to support a variety of sports based activities. The design and evaluation of such systems is challenging since factors relating to the technical quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience (QoE) are difficult to identify and measure. In this paper we present a novel QoS/QoE model and evaluation methodology that is being used in the development and testing of the 3D-LIVE mixed reality platform. Our initial results provide some insights into the quality of user experience (UX) we observed from users interacting with 3D-LIVE and are evaluated in the light of QoS data captured. We conclude by discussing the impact of these findings on future platform developments

Dynamic Adaptive Mesh Streaming for Real-time 3D Teleimmersion

Recent advances in full body 3D reconstruction methods have lead to the realisation of high quality, real-time, photo realistic capture of users in a range of tele-immersion (TI) contexts including gaming and mixed reality environments. The full body reconstruction (FBR) process is computationally expensive requiring comparatively high CPU, GPU and network resources in order to maintain a shared, virtual reality in which high quality 3D reproductions of users can be rendered in real-time. A significant optimisation of the delivery of FBR content has been achieved through the realtime compression and de-compression of 3D geometry and textures.Here we present a new, adaptive compression methodology that allows a TI system called 3D-LIVE to modify the quality and speed of a FBR TI pipeline based on the data carrying capability of the network. Our rule-based adaptation strategy uses network performance sampling processes and a configurable rule engine to dynamically alter the compression of FBR reconstruction on-the-fly.We demonstrate the efficacy of the approach with an experimental evaluation of system and conclude with a discussion of future directions for adaptive FBR compression

3D-LIVE: D1.2 Report on the Study and Creation of the Holistic User Experience Model

The deliverable D1.2 is produced by the task T1.2 that is intended to study the most appropriate 3D LIVE User Experience Model for looking at the technological, social, and economical aspects of the 3D-LIVE Tele-Immersive Environment that form the dimensions of the User Experience Model. This report presents the resulting model that will be used at the experimentation stage in order to evaluate/measure the UX of the 3D-LIVE Tele-Immersive Environment