ABSTRACT
In the early 1990s, little systematic attention was paid to the way in which virtual environments (VEs) were or should be designed. This was for a number of reasons. First, many early VEs were proof-of-concept demonstrations (with fairly crude object representations), produced at great speed often by trial and error to sell the idea of VEs to potential user organizations. Little time or thought was given to de˜ning the development process. Second, several early VEs and development processes were commercially or militarily con˜dential and therefore publication was not an option. Third, VE games were often based on other computer games, and in any case, their developers had no scienti˜c reason to publish anything on their design and development process and may have had good commercial reasons not to; no published accounts therefore exist. The fourth category of early VEs was simple usability test prototypes, to allow ergonomists and psychologists to experiment with various aspects of the virtual experience and with factors of VE usability. Again, there would be little need for, or thought given to, the VE design process.
