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Abstract
This paper reports on a study in which virtual reality representations of a car were compared with concept sketches and a real car as a means for customer evaluations. Early communication with customers is important in order to identify customer needs and to achieve response on design solutions. Physical prototypes are often used for these purposes, but they are costly to produce, inflexible in modifications, and expensive and fragile to carry, which has lead to an increased interest for the use of virtual reality prototypes. However, knowledge is scarce of how different types of product representations may influence customers' understanding of a product concept. The study indicated that the different product representations resulted in small differences in the participants' understanding of the car, despite the greater degree of realism in the virtual reality representations and, of course in the real car, compared with the sketches. The study indicates that there are other factors to consider than the degree of realism in the product representations for efficient product evaluations with customers; for example, that the participants are well familiar with the type of product, but also with the type of representation technology.
Acknowledgements
The author is greatly indebted to Associate Professor MariAnne Karlsson, Ph.D., at the Department of Human Factors Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, for valuable advice and support during the work on this paper. The author would also like to address special thanks to Lisbeth B. Lindahl, Dennis Saluäär and Emil Knabe at Volvo Technological Development Corporation in Göteborg, Sweden, for their co-operation and support. This study was financed in part by Volvo Technological Development Corporation.