Virtual Collaborative Design Environment: Information structure and interfaces

The failure to identify design issues in early phases of construction projects has been identified as a significant cause of costly rework, as these issues can impact the building occupants’ abilities to efficiently perform their daily work tasks. Therefore, it is crucial to consider their feedback when design reviewing. To date, efforts have been made to involve building occupants via a variety of user-interfaces that provide different understandings of the project. One such example is Virtual Reality (VR), which increases building occupants’ spatial understanding. Another, is use of design guidelines, intended to support both end-users such as building occupants and also the design team in basing their decision-making on best-practice and ensuring compliance with design requirements. When used together, these different user-interfaces can complement each other by enabling, for instance, visualization of the furniture layout depicted in design guideline documents. However, few studies have identified what is required of a design tool capable of supporting both visualization of design and design-compliance via different user-interfaces. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to advance the understanding of end-users’ involvement in virtual collaborative environments in the building design process. Accordingly, Design Science Research was applied with a two-fold purpose. First, to identify different stakeholders’ challenges that are faced in the design process and specifically how building occupants’ daily work tasks are considered in the design process. Secondly, the research methods such as workshops, semi-structured interviews and documentation analysis helped identify the requirements of a design tool that would enable this knowledge to be transferred and accessible at a cross-project level. The results show that the information structure and user-interface of design guidelines determine to a large degree how effectively compliance with requirements can be validated. An example is the absence of user-interfaces in design guidelines which prevents building occupants from gaining sufficient spatial understanding. This lack of spatial understanding results in them to being reliant on other project members, such as architects and facility planners, for providing input on the design. Moreover, the results show how cross-project knowledge is difficult to facilitate due to how design guidelines have not been created in relation to today’s digital design process. Therefore, this thesis bridges the concepts of integrating design guidelines and VR in the same design tool

Knowledge Integration Through Resource Combining: The Case of a National Standard Framework for Hospital Design

The hospital design process contains technical and organisational challenges. The paper investigates how the Swedish national healthcare project framework and database, Program for Technical Standard (PTS), is used to facilitate knowledge integration within and across hospital projects and the outcomes thereof. The study covers data from 7 Swedish regions based on 12 semi-structured interviews with 14 facility mangers, 2 property managers as well as the national system administrator for PTS. PTS is considered to support the design process; however, some actors also perceive that PTS as a standard is not compatible with the call for adaptation. By mapping how the specific resource, PTS, is combined differently in various resource constellations, the results show that the value is contingent on the integration (or lack of) of numerous technical and organisational resources interfaces within and across organisations, projects, and regions. In particular, the perceived value of using the standard framework relates to its integration with the client\u27s internal resources and project processes, and the matureness of digital competence. The divergence of knowledge integration is shown to be present on a project level as well as on a national level among the regions

An ontological approach for a recommendation system of a requirement tool: the case of a national standard framework for hospital design

There is a need to facilitate cross-project learning in hospital projects. To do this, the Swedish national healthcare project frame and database, PTS (Program for Technical Standard), has been created to provide a framework for Swedish regions when conducting hospital projects. However, the fragmented information currently available and overall structure makes it difficult to embed knowledge and requirements for cross-project learning. In this paper we use an ontological framework to review the current structure of PTS and also propose a conceptual information-structure for machine readable functional and spatial requirements that can be utilized in a recommendation system for hospital room layout

Collaborative Design Review Sessions In Virtual Reality: Multi-Scale And Multi-User

The use of Virtual Reality (VR) for design reviews in projects is becoming more common in construction. However, the use of VR in these processes has been limited to been used more as a complementary reviewing tool alongside information medias such as 2D drawings and 3D models. Furthermore, immersive VR has been argued to have limitations when it comes to orientation and understanding and reasoning about functional links between physical layouts in a facility. This paper presents a case study of a VR system used during design reviews that support end-users to switch betweendifferent representations and scale i.e., miniature model/bird-eye view, and a 1:1 scale experience of the facility. The data gathered, consisted of recorded observation of the VR based design review process and study what type of discussion and design errors that was found during two VR-workshops connected to a new elementary school. The result shows, that by supporting switching between miniature model and 1:1scale VR experience facilitated spatial orientation and understanding and collaboration across disciplines in the project. The study also show how collaborative immersive VR can be used as an efficient communication-tool during the design process in a real-world project

How Virtual Reality is used when involving healthcare staff in the design process

The design process of a new hospital is often recognized as a complex task involving a diverse group of actors. The most common information media used today are project related documents and drawings. Hospital users\ub4 ability to interpret information through these varies. This affects the design feedback from users. However, an increasing use of Virtual Reality (VR) support possibilities to facilitate better understanding. This paper presents six case studies of hospital design projects, where VR has been used with the purpose of involving end-users, investigating how and when VR has been implemented and which effects and experiences that could be noted.The findings show different levels of involvement, engagement, collaboration, and interactivity. Using VR contributes throughout the design process but is dependent on purpose and setup. Furthermore, there is a strong connection between engagement and the interactivity of the VR model

VR as a tool for specification of functional requirement in construction of hospital facilities

This paper investigates how virtual reality (VR) can facilitate the planning of new hospital premises from an end-user perspective and whether VR can minimize the risk of costly reconstructions close after commissioning. Currently, review of hospital premises is done in 2D based blueprints and 3D models. These blueprints and models do not always provide sufficient understanding on the hospital staff’s part. VR has been developed by suppliers to counteract this problem and to function as a design review tool for the end-users. VR is mainly used in the design phase of the building process, whereas it acts as a complementary design tool during the later phases of the building process, when the end-user participation is less tangible. Due to VR not being an established tool for all parties involved in the building process, it has consequently led to difficulties for the hospital in terms of understanding the value of said technique and knowing what set of requirements that should be taken into consideration when implementing VR into the building project. The results in this paper have shown that VR is a better tool during the design process than other available review tools. This enhanced understanding is not only limited to the end-users, but the suppliers as well have shown a better understanding of what they offer to their hospital clients. The results also show that the value of VR mainly is apparent during the design phase and less evident during the later phases of the building process due to the technical limitations VR currently faces