Innovation

INNOVATION

Virtual Workspace Design is a process that facilitates Participatory Design Methodologies. It utilises digital visualisation software and physical media and supports user participation in an interactive environment. Physical "tags" can be visually tracked and represented in a digital space and allows participants to design digital 3D layouts by the placement of these tags. This digitised method allows anyone, irrespective of skill-level, to contribute to the design process in a hands-on interactive way. Barrier to entry is low for participants and equipment needs are also kept relatively low.

Tag positions are tracked visually using a camera which updates 3D models in a digital environment, represented on a screen. This allows participants to all see a unified state of the layout design and provide feedback accordingly with all participants. It is an intuitive tool allowing people of varying skill levels to contribute meaningfully to the design process.

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT TO DATE

Virtual Workspace Design has been developed as an interactive design methodology removing the specific skill barriers during a design process and keeping equipment costs low. This provides an easy barrier to entry, cooperative and engaging environment for design activities for all stakeholders that allows the creation of more robust designs in shorter time scales.

Virtual Workspace Design is built upon the Unity game development engine. This provides an expandable code base to develop further features and integration with third party systems and data sources.

ONGOING DEVELOPMENT

This technology is expandable and new features are currently being developed for our partners to utilise the latest digital technologies such as:

IoT integration and digital twins allowing the software to use real data during the design process to improve design decisions.
Virtual and augmented reality head mount displays to be able to visualise the design on a 1:1 scale to understand impacts of changes.
Physical and cognitive ergonomics assessments to analyse the impact of the design on human health and wellbeing and reduce health risks.
Metadata driven metrics based on user KPIs. The use of imported metadata to improve the design process and allow users to make immediate decisions.
Linking with Discrete Event Simulation work to simulate and quantify the efficacy of a draft design concept.

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