Jafarifiroozabadi Roxana, Joshi Rutali, Joseph Anjali, Wingler Deborah
Lawrence Technological University, Southfield, MI, USA.
School of Architecture, Center for Health Facilities Design and Testing, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA.
HERD. 2022 Apr;15(2):248-261. doi: 10.1177/19375867211062268. Epub 2021 Dec 8.
This study proposed a combined methodology to evaluate the perceived usability of healthcare seats that were first selected in a virtual waiting room which provided the context of use for the seats.
There has been an increased interest in using virtual reality (VR) for evaluation of seating in interior environments. Although VR offers a less expensive approach compared to evaluating seats in situ, using VR has limitations as users cannot experience the actual seat prototypes.
Participants ( = 92) experienced a virtual waiting room with various seat groupings and were prompted with four task-based scenarios through which they selected a seat. After the VR phase, they experienced their selected seats in a lab and used an online questionnaire to evaluate the seating. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to garner similarities and differences in participants' experience of virtual and real seats.
Three categories including comfort, support, and flexibility were extracted from the questionnaire. While support and comfort categories were highly ranked by participants, the category rankings varied depending on participants' age, gender, tasks, and seat types. Interviews revealed that there were differences in experience of the seating materials in VR versus reality, and therefore experiencing the real seats was useful in seating evaluation.
The findings suggest that the combined methodology using VR and real seating in a lab is a reliable tool for designers and furniture manufacturers to obtain users' perceived usability evaluation of seating during the design process while the actual context is absent.
本研究提出了一种综合方法，用于评估在虚拟候诊室中首次选定的医疗座椅的感知可用性，该虚拟候诊室为座椅提供了使用场景。
使用虚拟现实（VR）评估室内环境中的座椅越来越受到关注。尽管与现场评估座椅相比，VR提供了一种成本较低的方法，但使用VR存在局限性，因为用户无法体验实际的座椅原型。
92名参与者体验了一个有各种座椅组合的虚拟候诊室，并通过四个基于任务的场景被提示选择一把座椅。在VR阶段之后，他们在实验室中体验了他们选择的座椅，并使用在线问卷对座椅进行评估。进行了半结构化访谈，以了解参与者对虚拟座椅和真实座椅体验的异同。
从问卷中提取了舒适、支撑和灵活性三个类别。虽然支撑和舒适类别在参与者中排名很高，但类别排名因参与者的年龄、性别、任务和座椅类型而异。访谈显示，VR与现实中座椅材料的体验存在差异，因此体验真实座椅对座椅评估很有用。
研究结果表明，在缺乏实际场景的情况下，在实验室中结合使用VR和真实座椅的综合方法是设计师和家具制造商在设计过程中获得用户对座椅感知可用性评估的可靠工具。
