Biofeedback in the Dynamic VR Environments:: A Method to Evaluate the Influence of Architectural Elements on Human Spatial Perception

Contemporary architecture design is featured by human-oriented. Getting the users’ feedback of schemes thus to optimize their positive interactions with spaces is essential to increase designs’ quality and attraction. However, uncovering users’ true thoughts is challenging because it is difficult for laypersons with no professional design background to describe how architectural elements can affect their emotions. This study aims to use digital technology to comprehend architectural elements’ impact on users’ perception. Specifically, it combines virtual reality (VR) with biosensing technology to detect users’ emotions, guiding designers to improve their design schemes. In this context, to propose a method of evaluation, this research adopted the International School of Design of Harbin Institute of Technology's outdoor spaces as the empirical case. VR had been applied as a visualization tool to construct a dynamic and immersion environment that imitates the campus space. Then some key design elements were changed to form contrast schemes. Participants were recruited to experience these contrast spaces and were collected Electrodermal Activity (EDA) and Photoplethysmography (PPG) signals for emotional arousal analysis. Biofeedback data were analyzed using the paired-samples T-test. The results indicated that some of the design elements did affect users’ emotional arousal during roaming; others did not cause a significant difference affection. According to the evaluation result, designers can understand the emotional connection between a design element and users to decide if it needs to be further refined. This research proposed a method that can be used for dynamic and repeatable evaluation of design before the project is completed. Simultaneously, this method can help designers quantitate users’ emotional perception and gain the objective basis for design optimization.