The Advancement of Virtual Reality in Automotive Market Research: Challenges and Opportunities

Virtual Reality (VR) can play a key role in automotive marketing research, lowering costs and shortening the time to launch a new product. However, few VR applications support automotive customers’ experiences during the early stages of product design. This study aims to identify and characterize into attributes the challenges and opportunities for the application of Virtual Reality in car clinics through a systematic review of the literature and patents. We searched PatentScout, ScienceDirect, Springer, and IEEEXplore for studies published between the databases’ inception and July 2020. Of the 77,383 patents and 336,785 articles identified, 72 and 13 were eligible, respectively. We discovered that patents are strongly concentrated by a few inventors, that the United States has the most records, and that the most prevalent applications relate to devices for automatically reading responders’ emotions in virtual environments. The articles revealed sixteen categories of challenges and opportunities: cost, location to customers, flexibility in interactions, model transportation, depth perception, haptic perception, motion, movement perception/physical collision, color and texture, sound feedback, product interaction/manipulation, visual–spatial, graphic quality, intuitiveness, cybersecurity, and cybersickness. Virtual Reality may be used for automotive marketing research but key factors such as hardware and software specification, stimulus quality, and survey objectives must be considered.

The Advancement of Virtual Reality in Automotive Market Research: Challenges and Opportunities

Virtual reality (VR) can play a key role in automotive marketing research, lowering costs and shortening the time it takes to bring a new product to market. However, there are still few VR applications that support automotive customers' experiences during the early stages of product development. Through a systematic review of literature and patents, this study aims to identify the challenges and opportunities for the application of virtual reality in car clinics, and to categorize them into attributes. We searched through the knowledge databases of PatentScout, ScienceDirect, Springer, and IEEEXplore. We found 72 patents with a high concentration in a few inventors. The United States of America presented the greatest number of records and the most common applications related to the apparatus for automatically reading respondents' reactions in a virtual environment. In terms of articles, we found 19 research papers that discussed sixteen categories identified as challenges and opportunities for automotive marketing research: 1) cost, 2) location to customers, 3) flexibility in interactions, 4) model transportation, 5) depth perception, 6) haptic perception, 7) motion, 8) movement perception/ physical collision, 9) color and texture, 10) sound feedback, 11) product interaction/manipulation, 12) visual-spatial, 13) graphic quality, 14) intuitiveness, 15) cybersecurity and 16) cybersickness. We conclude that the automotive industry can employ virtual reality for marketing research, but relevant elements such as hardware and software definition, stimulus quality, and research objectives, among others, must be considered.

Experimental Study on Abstract Expression of Human-Robot Emotional Communication

With the continuous development of intelligent product interaction technology, the facial expression design of virtual images on the interactive interface of intelligent products has become an important research topic. Based on the current research on facial expression design of existing intelligent products, we symmetrically mapped the PAD (pleasure–arousal–dominance) emotion value to the image design, explored the characteristics of abstract expressions and the principles of expression design, and evaluated them experimentally. In this study, the experiment of PAD scores was conducted on the emotion expression design of abstract expressions, and the data results were analyzed to iterate the expression design. The experimental results show that PAD values can effectively guide designers in expression design. Meanwhile, the efficiency and recognition accuracy of human communication with abstract expression design can be improved by facial auxiliary elements and eyebrows.

Making Order in User Experience Research to Support Its Application in Design and Beyond

The term User Experience (UX) was introduced to define the dynamics of the human-product interaction, and it was thought that design would have been a main recipient of UX research. However, it can be claimed that the outcomes of UX studies were not seamlessly transferred into design research and practice. Among the possible reasons, this paper addresses the fragmentary knowledge ascribable to the field of UX. The authors reviewed the literature analyzing the conceptual contributions that interpret UX, proposing definitions and/or a theoretical framework. This allowed the authors to provide an overview of recurring elements of UX, highlighting their relationships and affecting factors. This research aims to clarify the overall understanding of UX, along with its key components (the user, interaction, the system, and context) and dimensions (ergonomic, affective, and the cognitive experiences). The authors built a semantic construction inspired by the structure of a grammatical sentence to highlight the relationship between those components. Therefore, UX is defined by a subject/user who performs an action-interaction towards an object-system. A complement-context better defines the condition(s) where the action-interaction takes place. This work is expected to lay the foundations for the understanding of approaches and methods employed in UX studies, especially in design.

DETECTING BAD DESIGN AND BIAS FROM PATENTS

The representation of the product use context is a well established design practice in Engineering Design. Recently, design theory is studying the product interaction involving several cognitive aspects such as the possible conditions in which a wrong interaction occurs. The aim of this paper is to find a quantitative evidence of the causes of these misuses. In particular, this study focuses on the detection of bad design and biases.In this paper, we propose a method that helps to the automatic detection of bad design and biases from patents. The method is based on an approach that defines syntactic rules to detect sentences containing these artifacts. These rules are defined based on an exploratory analysis of the explicit mention of “bad design” and “bias” and then, tested with multiple experiments on a sample of patents. The results give a first quantitative evidence of the presence of bad design and biases in patents and consequently of their importance in the design theory. In particular, it is provided a fine grain analysis of the linguistic structure of sentences containing these artifacts helping designers in detecting automatically them from patents.

Prototyping Human-Centered Products in the Age of Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 promises better control of the overall product development process; however, there is a lack of computational frameworks that can inject human factors engineering principles early in design. This shortage is particularly crucial for prototyping of human-centered products where the stakes are high. Thus, a smooth Industry 4.0 transformation requires bringing computational ergonomics into the loop, specifically to address the needs in the digitized prototyping process. In this paper, a computational prototyping approach is explored that focuses on various fidelity levels and different human-product interaction levels when conducting ergonomics assessments. Three computational prototyping strategies were explored, including (1) a digital sketchpad based tool, (2) computer-aided design and digital human modeling based approach, and (3) a combination of computer-aided design, digital human modeling, and surrogate modeling. These strategies are applied to six case studies to perform various ergonomics assessments (reach, vision, and lower-back). It is suggest that designers must determine which fidelity level prototype to employ after applying a trade-off study between the accuracy of the ergonomics outcomes and the available resources. Understanding the intricacies between the fidelity level, type of ergonomic assessment, and human-product interaction level helps designers in getting one step closer to digitizing the human-centered prototyping in meeting Industry 4.0 objectives.

Sustainable Design for a Functional Reeducation of Senior Citizens About the Basic Activities of Daily Living

Developing useful objects for a functional reeducation of senior citizens persons about the basic activities of daily living must be conceptualized considering theories, techniques, and approaches in methodology, based on ecologically bearable structures, economically viable, and socially equitable. Consequently, the present chapter has the objective to state the criteria and strategies of a sustainable design, from a detailed study of applicability of 1) user-product interaction, observation, understanding, dimensional relationship, and evaluation; 2) creative process, identification, ideation, definition, prototypes, evaluation, and structuration; 3) technical specifications, structure, sustainability, ergonomics, aesthetics, and evaluation; 4) manufacture method, sustainability, production method, life cycle, capital assets, official norms, and optimization. A contextual and conceptual analysis is proposed for the beginning, development, and conclusion of the projects so as to reestablish the relationship between natural processes and human activity.