Virtual environments promise to provide the user with the experience of a life-like yet computer generated world (Langlois, 1996). A virtual space can become a Haida Gwaii village off the coast of British Columbia (Macdonald, 1996) or the Niña, the Pinta or Santa Maria sailing across the Atlantic Ocean in the year 1492 (Johnson, 1997).

The environment's capacity to immerse an individual in its virtual world is assumed to rest on the realism of the images presented and the integration of the user's perceptions and sensations. In a virtual environment, visual and auditory stimuli are modified, as in the real world, according to the movements of the individual. When the user moves his/her head, the perspective of the scene and the quality of the local noise are redefined. The actions initiated by the participant of the virtual world influence what he/she sees and hears. The user is an active participant of the world.

Design requirements and principles

At the heart of the promise held by the technology lies the identification and design of the life-like qualities that must be part of the virtual world in order for the user to believe in a new reality. In order to contribute to the conceptual framework being developed in this area, a recent report (Parent, 1998a) summarises the results of a literature review based on issues of the journal Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments published between 1992 and 1996. The purpose of the report was to collect and group design requirements and principles according to the key activities performed in virtual environments: viewing, exploration and the manipulation of virtual objects. Eight categories of design requirements are assumed to drive the creation of the environment. Design principles aim to support human sensory, cognitive and ergonomic requirements. Specifically, visual, auditory and haptic principles address human sensory requirements. Principles relevant to memory capacity, information load and mental models are defined under cognitive requirements. Physical and physiological guidelines aim to satisfy ergonomic requirements. Given the rapid evolution of the field, this document does not presume to contain an exhaustive survey of the literature but hopes to provide designers of life-like virtual environments with a useful frame of reference.

The creation and evaluation of virtual art exhibits

In order to support the needs analysis process essential to the creation of life-like virtual environments, a second report (Parent, 1998b), in the form of a workbook, was elaborated to provide structure and guidance to the needs analysis process assumed essential to the creation and evaluation of virtual art exhibits. An understanding of target applications is critical to user satisfaction and to the successful development of a system. Pragmatic methods are currently needed to identify the specific needs of such environments and capture them within clearrequirements documentation (Stuart, 1996). This work aims to help close the gap between users and developers, ensuring that applications products and services meet user expectations. The more informed our analyses, the better our design choices are likely to be. The first part of the workbook draws a general profile of the target application. It introduces organisational, user and task related factors typically collected when designing or modifying computer-based systems. The second section presents the user and task requirements unique to the creation of a virtual environment. Task requirements are collected within storyboards and organised according to an appropriate architecture. Storyboards identify the images, sounds, sensations and scents found in individual galleries. The architecture establishes a sensible order in which the galleries may be accessed. User requirements determine the human sensory, cognitive and ergonomic needs relevant to the key activities museum visitors are expected to perform. Activities include visualisation and inspection, exploration and the manipulation of virtual artefacts. User requirements. are defined according to the eight goal-categories described in Parent (1998a). The last section of the workbook identifies usability issues, measures of achieved performance and/or competence. Four subjective measures are suggested to evaluate the success of the system and identify critical issues. One questionnaire investigates user satisfaction with regard to the activities performed within the environment. A second targets health issues and a third the participants' reported sense of presence and realism. A fourth questionnaire collects information relevant to various image properties of specific interest to art specialists.

References

Johnson, J. (1997). The virtual endeavor experiment: a networked VR application. Proceedings on the Fourth International Conference on Hypermedia and Interactivity in Museums, September 3-5, France, 68-73.

Langlois, G. (1996). La science de l'illusion: la réalité virtuelle. Interface, 17(6), pp. 40-49.

MacDonald, G.F. (1996). Haida Art. Douglas and McIntyre Ltd., Vancouver, British Columbia.

Parent A. (1998a). Life-like Virtual Environments: An Introductory Survey. Technical Report ERB-1055. NRC 41555.

Parent A. (1998b) A Virtual Environment Task Analysis Tool for the Creation and Evaluation of Virtual Art Exhibits. Technical Report ERB-1056. NRC 41557.

Parent A. (1999). A Virtual Environment Task-Analysis Tool for the Creation of Virtual Art Exhibits. Presence, Vol.3, Number 3, pp 355-365.

Stuart, R. (1996). The Design of Virtual Environments. McGraw Hill Series on Visual Technology.

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