Design, communication & collaboration in immersive virtual environments

Virtual Environments (VE) are increasingly offered as environments for design. Using VE to visualize ideas from the initial steps of design, the architect is challenged to deal with perception of space, solid and void, without translations to and from a two dimensional media. From this new ability, we might expect new forms of design expression. The goal of our study was to identify how designers use and communicate early design ideas by using immersive three-dimensional VEs. We set-up a series of experiments including navigation- and perception-tasks, designing in immersive VE, transcription of design, remote communication between design partners and controlled observations. We explored initial intentions of three-dimensional (3D) immersive design schemes, textual descriptions and collaborations within immersive VE. This article describes the outcome of creation, interpretation and communication of architectural design, by using a 3D maze together with text-based communication in a series of collaborative design experiments. We conducted the first successful attempt of a Joint Design Studio, which uses immersive VE as tool of design and communication between remote partners. We discuss frameworks and factors influencing how architectural students communicate their proposals in an immersive Virtual Environment Design Studio (VeDS), and how this new approach of design studio enables new forms of design expressions.