ABSTRACT
Quebrada-Dafundo, Portugal 5
{lmteixeira@fmh.utl.pt; emilia.duarte@iade.pt; jteles@fmh.utl.pt; marianavital@fmh.utl.pt; frebelo@fmh.utl.pt; fms.fautl@gmail.com}
CIAUD - Research Centre in Architecture, Urban Planning and Design – FA – Technical University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal
The purpose of this study was to evaluate human interaction with Virtual Environments (VEs) through the use of matrices of space exploration. The matrices are the outputs of the participants’ exploration of a VE in five experimental conditions, defined by two levels of visual pollution (i.e., more visually polluted and less visually polluted) containing two types of warnings (i.e., static and dynamic), plus a control condition (i.e., less visually polluted without warnings). One hundred and fifty individuals participated in this study, thirty in each experimental condition. They were asked to perform a work-related task, which required the search of some button switches that were placed in different areas of the VE and that were signalized by the warnings. Admitting that the more salient warnings (dynamic) would be detected more easily, the hypothesis is that there would be differences in
the space exploration between the experimental conditions and that these differences would be reflected on the matrices. The data required for the matrices generation (i.e., the position of the participant at all times, the time spent and distances travelled in the VE) were automatically recorded, resulting in information about the cells stepped by the participants and the frequency that they were stepped. The “agreement” of the space exploration matrices was evaluated through the application of the Concordance Correlation Coefficient over the frequencies that the cells were stepped on. The obtained results show high values of “agreement” between the matrices, which suggests that the space exploration in the VE was not strongly influenced by the experimental condition.
