Presentation
Getting Real on Virtual Reality: A Critical Analysis of the Value and Limitations of VR Simulation for Design Development and Potential Application in Human Factors Evaluation and Research
DescriptionVirtual reality (VR) is emerging as a powerful tool for simulating medical device form, function, and user interaction well before physical prototypes are built; and the ability to place subjects within highly immersive environments - no matter where they are in the world - has great potential for design, development and human factors evaluation and design research. However, as the technology continues to mature, it has become clear that while VR offers genuine potential, its most impactful applications are narrowly focused and demand careful integration. The adoption of VR should be guided by critical evaluation of its strengths, limitations, and the obstacles teams are likely to face along the way.
Within design & development, VR excels on projects where spatial visualization and environmental context are paramount, and where remote stakeholder engagement is beneficial. Creating immersive, full-scale environments populated with real design CAD enable teams - especially global ones - to experience and iterate upon designs far more quickly than with traditional physical prototyping. This advantage becomes game-changing when the products being designed are large; for instance, high-throughput diagnostic devices, medical water purification systems, and even vehicles or architectural spaces, which present obvious cost and logistical challenges for physically building at scale and shipping to distant teams.
This presentation will draw on specific project examples and lessons learned from VR projects at Veranex, demonstrating how immersive environments and interactive objects were used as stand-ins for physical models to support client communication and alignment, and facilitate rapid design iteration.
In one case, using VR to evaluate a large scale “lab in a box” diagnostic instrument allowed Veranex designers in the USA and clients in Australia to synchronize around the physical design without shipping massive prototypes or coordinating international site visits. In another example, the same virtual lab environment and user control assets were leveraged to create an even more interactive experience for a different client, this time based in Portugal, with the intent of gathering feedback on their system footprint and workflow from key opinion leaders before the physical product had even been designed.
This session will also look at the differences between plug-and-play tools for rapidly evaluating designs in VR, and custom, standalone VR experiences created in editors like Unity, which offer greater potential for immersion at the cost of much higher technical complexity to implement. We will detail how some of these challenges manifested during project execution:
• The labor-intensive process of optimizing complex engineering models to accommodate VR hardware limitations.
• Debugging and troubleshooting interactive elements
• Creating a robust user experience for deploying the VR application and hardware without direct technical support from the Veranex team, including accompanying documentation to ensure a smooth presentation to key stakeholders.
The session will also critically examine the potential value of VR and human factors research, highlighting strengths such as flexibility, cost savings and rapid iteration. It is indeed valuable for simulating interactions with large devices, for virtual wayfinding or workflow studies, or shipping headsets to remote users for observational testing. However, understanding the limitations of VR simulation are once again essential to applying it effectively. Even in the best VR simulations (those found in commercial videogaming and military applications) fidelity of hand-object interaction and realistic material feedback are simply out of reach, and environmental distractions and subtleties that can yield valuable research insights can only be approximated. And with more accurate simulations come exponentially increasing costs, technical complexity, and the question of validity compared to more traditional approaches.
Moreover, onboarding inexperienced users, dealing with the potential for motion sickness, and ensuring robust technical support are major operational hurdles. Without significant setup and troubleshooting, users may struggle, particularly when research must rely on unsupervised sessions. Teams considering VR should carefully scrutinize whether it truly offers clear benefits for their use case, or whether more traditional methods would be faster, less expensive, or deliver richer insights. As with any new tool, excitement around its promise should be tempered by a clear understanding of its real-world costs and limitations.
Looking to the future, as VR and even Augmented Reality (AR) technologies continue to mature, we may see increasing adoption to accelerate innovation in design development and enable high quality simulation and rapid iteration in human factors research. However, the specific technical expertise needed to enable this potential may remain a limiting factor; individuals or organizations who develop this specialized skillset and assets that can be quickly adapted to meet specific project needs will stand to benefit greatly.
Within design & development, VR excels on projects where spatial visualization and environmental context are paramount, and where remote stakeholder engagement is beneficial. Creating immersive, full-scale environments populated with real design CAD enable teams - especially global ones - to experience and iterate upon designs far more quickly than with traditional physical prototyping. This advantage becomes game-changing when the products being designed are large; for instance, high-throughput diagnostic devices, medical water purification systems, and even vehicles or architectural spaces, which present obvious cost and logistical challenges for physically building at scale and shipping to distant teams.
This presentation will draw on specific project examples and lessons learned from VR projects at Veranex, demonstrating how immersive environments and interactive objects were used as stand-ins for physical models to support client communication and alignment, and facilitate rapid design iteration.
In one case, using VR to evaluate a large scale “lab in a box” diagnostic instrument allowed Veranex designers in the USA and clients in Australia to synchronize around the physical design without shipping massive prototypes or coordinating international site visits. In another example, the same virtual lab environment and user control assets were leveraged to create an even more interactive experience for a different client, this time based in Portugal, with the intent of gathering feedback on their system footprint and workflow from key opinion leaders before the physical product had even been designed.
This session will also look at the differences between plug-and-play tools for rapidly evaluating designs in VR, and custom, standalone VR experiences created in editors like Unity, which offer greater potential for immersion at the cost of much higher technical complexity to implement. We will detail how some of these challenges manifested during project execution:
• The labor-intensive process of optimizing complex engineering models to accommodate VR hardware limitations.
• Debugging and troubleshooting interactive elements
• Creating a robust user experience for deploying the VR application and hardware without direct technical support from the Veranex team, including accompanying documentation to ensure a smooth presentation to key stakeholders.
The session will also critically examine the potential value of VR and human factors research, highlighting strengths such as flexibility, cost savings and rapid iteration. It is indeed valuable for simulating interactions with large devices, for virtual wayfinding or workflow studies, or shipping headsets to remote users for observational testing. However, understanding the limitations of VR simulation are once again essential to applying it effectively. Even in the best VR simulations (those found in commercial videogaming and military applications) fidelity of hand-object interaction and realistic material feedback are simply out of reach, and environmental distractions and subtleties that can yield valuable research insights can only be approximated. And with more accurate simulations come exponentially increasing costs, technical complexity, and the question of validity compared to more traditional approaches.
Moreover, onboarding inexperienced users, dealing with the potential for motion sickness, and ensuring robust technical support are major operational hurdles. Without significant setup and troubleshooting, users may struggle, particularly when research must rely on unsupervised sessions. Teams considering VR should carefully scrutinize whether it truly offers clear benefits for their use case, or whether more traditional methods would be faster, less expensive, or deliver richer insights. As with any new tool, excitement around its promise should be tempered by a clear understanding of its real-world costs and limitations.
Looking to the future, as VR and even Augmented Reality (AR) technologies continue to mature, we may see increasing adoption to accelerate innovation in design development and enable high quality simulation and rapid iteration in human factors research. However, the specific technical expertise needed to enable this potential may remain a limiting factor; individuals or organizations who develop this specialized skillset and assets that can be quickly adapted to meet specific project needs will stand to benefit greatly.
Author
Event Type
Oral Presentations
TimeMonday, March 2311:37am - 12:00pm EDT
LocationMorgan
Simulation and Education