Pedagogical Discussion on the Application of Role Immersion in Interior Design Teaching

1.1 Barrier Among “Designers (Students)—Virtual Environment—Users”

The core of interior design is to comprehend the abstract quality of the shaped negative space and empty space. Although space is everywhere, it is not a conception of shape but the occupation, use and experience of body. Interior space defines human, behaviors and emotions in built environment. Body participation is the essential condition to acquire space experience. However, the unbuilt environment in the design phase is virtual, real body can’t participate in it actually. This brings a great barrier for design participants to anticipate human perception and experience in the built environment.

Marshall McLuhan put forward the famous theory that “media is the extension of man” and “media is the message”. All the media are extension of people’s senses, and senses are “intrinsic electric charge” of our physical ability [1]. Spatial experience is not only a visual perception but also a combination of the other senses [2]. For the current interior design, its media tool such as perspective painting, small-size model (miniature three-dimensional solid model), and sometimes even the original-size model, are all the extensions of people’s visual sense of the built environment. These tools are not enough to meet the needs of fully displaying indoor perception and experience. The existing written and visual languages limits our ability to properly evaluate the quality of interior space. Although design terms can be very practical (including expressions such as function and communication), they cannot describe the intentional emotional communication between people, objects and the environment.

From another perspective, the media tools trapped in vision promote excessive respect for visual effects of the images in interior design teaching. As a result, the biased visual effect becomes the basis for design evaluating, while the real feelings of people in the environment are ignored completely. Though the perception and experience factors are mentioned or even emphasized, it is actually easier to know than to do in the design process because of the abstract term and the restriction of media tools. Furthermore, designers are often not the users of the built environment, or representatives for all of them. Designers (especially students) are used to seeing things from their perspectives and draw self-centered conclusions. It is easy for them to deviate or difficult to focus on users as the center and core of the environment.

One lawsuit caused by the design of Farnsworth House, which is praised as model of modernist architecture illustrates the problem vividly. The project was designed by master architect Mies Van Der Rohe and received a good reputation after its completion. The only person who did not like it is the homeowner, doctor Edith Farnsworth herself. It is because of the potential privacy and thermal performance of the indoor environment. She asked the architect to revise it but was rejected, so they went to the court finally. Imagine, if the designer himself could start the design from the perspective of the user (female doctor), or if the user could understand the design by intuitive and understandable means of communication (such as being in space), instead of the drawings or a miniature scale physical model which only be read by professionals, the problems exposed in the actual use of the environment after the completion of the project may be discussed and corrected during the design phase in advance.

During the design phase, the barrier among “designers- virtual environment-users” can pose obstacles to talented and experienced design masters, not to mention the students who are still in their education stage and have relatively limited professional and life experience. This has been one of the main problems in interior design teaching for a long time.

1.2 The Proposition of Experience Economy in This Era

In the context of the times, with the transformation of economic models from stereotype to customization, experience economy has become an innovative driving force for social development, and the work and life experience with the embodied mind has been valued. The market used to focus on the functional attributes of products, but later changed the focus to consumer experience [3]. The relative success of design not only depends the solution of physical function, but also on the positive feeling experience that users can enjoy and evoke from the product or environment. The emphasis of interior design has also evolved from emphasizing “what” and “what to do” to “what to represent” and “what to feel”. Although people are born with perception and experience, sound perceptual effects and experiences need to be skillfully stimulated. This has become an inevitable proposition of the times for interior design teaching oriented to social practice.

In view of the above problems in the teaching of environmental design and the proposition of the new era, this study learns from relevant theories of embodied cognition, design thinking and drama performance to develop the method of “role immersion” and integrate it into the general procedure of interior design.

2.1 The Theoretical Basis and Media Tools of Role Immersion

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a French philosopher, opposed the mind-body dualism represented by Descartes in traditional western philosophy. He believed that the physical perception was the basis of behavior, and there was no consciousness of self-existence behind perception. Human beings’ understanding of the world is mediated by the body and is related to the whole world through the body’s perception [4]. Modern psychology has inherited and developed this idea of “embodied subjectivity” and formed the theory of “embodied cognition”. The theory is explicitly based on the theory of body and mind integration, explaining the interaction between the body and the environment and its key role in the cognitive process. The most basic and unforgettable feeling of three-dimension lies in the physical experience. All kinds of feelings are produced in the process of experiencing architecture, and are the basis of comprehension and perception of space [5].

The perception and experience of people in the built environment is a kind of embodied cognition in which the body is deeply involved and “integrates mind and body”, called “experiencing with the body and mind”. In the design phase, design participants are unable to experience the environment by themselves. At present, the media tools they rely on only obtain and process environmental information through simplified and deformed visual channels. This is a disembodied cognition that is observational and body-soul-separated. It may be said that “Both the body and mind are far away”.

The physical environment can only be perceived through human perception. People collect various primitive stimuli through the senses, which are later being processed by the brain. Then human perception of the world is formed. In other words, the way humans perceive the world and space comes directly from human themselves. Without human perception, the world does not exist.

Marshall McLuhan once predicted that we were rapidly approaching the last stage of human extension, that is the stage of technological simulation of consciousness. The emergence of Virtual Reality (VR) marks the arrival of this stage and puts forward its own practice ideas. With computer technology as the core, VR generates a digital Virtual Environment (VE) that is highly similar to a certain range of real environment in terms of sight, hearing, touch and other senses. Users interact with it with the necessary equipment. The technical characteristics of VR’s infinite imagination, multi-sensory immersion and natural interaction make it possible for participants to perceive non-physical virtual environment and form embodied cognition.

In terms of image display, currently there are two ways to participate in VR: stereoscopic head-mounted displays (HMD) and large fully immersive or semi-immersive projection systems [6]. HMD is essentially a two-dimensional window of a three-dimensional world, which can be used for synchronic perception and real-time modification of virtual environment at different stages of the scheme. The immersive projection systems provide the participants with the actual subjective experience in 3D model environment, which can be used for the diachronic experience of the final virtual environment of the scheme.

2.2 Framework of Role Immersion Framework

The formation of role immersion framework draws on relevant theories and methods of design thinking and drama performance. Empathy is one of the analysis methods and steps commonly used in design thinking. In short, this method can be understood as putting yourself in others’ shoes, aimed at eliminating the designer’s preconceived personal subjectivity. Empathy requires designers to recognize, grasp, and understand the needs and emotions of others in order to get close to the user’s true feelings. The basic elements of drama performance include actors, screenplays (or authors), audience and the physical space in which the play is realized, namely the theater and the stage. In the drama performance, the stage design transforms with different drama scenes based on the storyline described in the script, and cooperates with the actors’ performance, bringing the audience an immersive experience of temporarily leaving the real world and staying in the virtual world.

Everything in the world happens in a certain space scene. The design of the scene has a profound and lasting impact on the people in the place. As being the center person of the built environment, interior design is not only the design for the space, but also the “behavior” and “scene”. For example, think about what the user will see and smell when they enter the space. From these perceptual elements, people generate a variety of emotions, which can be changed into a variety of behaviors.

Correspondingly, in role immersion, the designed environment scenes serve as the stage setting. And the designer serves as an actor and incarnates the user’s role through empathy, while the design recipients (the reviewer, the project client, the user, etc.) act as the audience (Fig. 1). Design participants participate in the virtual environment scene created by interior design through their bodies. They generate immersive perception and experience subjectively, form an embodied cognition of the environment, and empathize with the user’s role. The implementation steps of role immersion include three parts: role substitution, body participation and situational performance, which are respectively integrated into the first, middle and last three stages of the general process of interior design.

The framework of role immersion

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The following is a detailed explanation of the method of role immersion integrated into general procedures of interior design through the third-year theme design course “Regeneration of Old Building Space”. The project is located in an old grinding wheel factory in the western district of Zhengzhou, Henan Province, China. The factory was built by the former east Germany in the 1960 s. A large number of Bauhaus-style old factories and office buildings are preserved in the site. At present, the factory site in the city is facing the development of transformation and will be relocated. The old site will be transformed and reused to become a multi-functional creative industrial park with the characteristics of industrial cultural heritage. According to the upper planning scheme, this course selects some the old buildings with reservation value in the site for spatial regeneration design.

3.1 Early Stage of Design + Role Substitution

In the early stage of design, role substitution helps to form design concepts and the formulate design specification.

Create User Roles. User roles are fictional characters that can represent the needs of the entire real users. The scattered data obtained in the process of user survey and user segmentation are reconnected by depicting the user. Personas make users more real and vivid, and help students to focus their problem perspectives on specific user objects to achieve empathy. Teachers can write or work with students to create descriptions of the basic information, interests, abilities, and weaknesses for each user role. One of the main consumption groups in this park in this case will be local residents within a 5 km radius and a 2 km walking circle. For example, at the beginning of the design of Living Arts Center, the students created a user role of a family of three and drew their portraits (Fig. 2).

One example of creating user role

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Get into the User Role and Create a Story Script. The students jumped out of their own subjective perspective and got into user roles with empathy. Based on the plane function bubble diagram, the story script with certain narrative and logic was created by taking the continuous flow of user role in the environment as a clue.

Split Shot Story. The story script is decomposed into split-shot stories, which are represented by split-shot storyboards (scene sketches), written ideas, etc. The split-up storyboard visually reflects the user’s perception and experience process in the indoor and outdoor environment from beginning to end, similar to the imaginary rehearsal before the drama performance. At this stage, the scenes in the storyboards do not need to be carefully portrayed. The main purpose is to help designers, design team, teachers and students to conceive or exchange ideas. In the process of forming the design concept, they should add their own research and thinking, clarify the design tasks, and provide the basis and blueprint for the next in-depth design (Fig. 3).

One example of split-shot storyboard

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The process of creating and substituting user roles is always around the design values. In this case, the overall design value of the park includes four aspects: business, society, history and nature. For example, in the design of Living Arts Center, in the original split-shot storyboards, when a character was enjoying leisure activities, other family members are isolated or idling. This directly exposed the problem of single, separated function of spatial planning. Based on this, the teacher guided the students to adjust the planning scheme. Finally, the design concept of multiple and mixing functions was formed so that a family of three (representing different consumer groups) can have their own place in the venue and share companionship, reflecting the commercial and social value.

3.2 Middle Stage of Design + Physical Participation

The design concepts, story scripts and split-shot stories formed in the stage of pre-design explain what need to change, while in the middle of the design, they gradually show how these changes occur. Based on the pre-formed storyboards, students deliberate on various environment objects, designing both space and human behavior and scenes. In this process, students still take the user role as the starting point for thinking, such as how the roles use space, what kind of mood and behavior it will generate, and what is the relationship between people in the space. With the help of VR, students make their bodies participate in the virtual environment created by the computer. The synchronicity and diachronic experience of the characters in the environment servers as the basis for conception, communication and deepening of the scheme, which also makes it the ultimate goal of the design.

Environmental Perception. The sensory system of the body interacts with the static space and is related to the continuous elements of time. This is called environmental perception. Through the VR renderer, students perceive the panoramic environment scene created by the computer in HMD. In the sketch model stage, we mainly focus on the basic relationship between space and people, including the sense of scale, the sense of interface, shape feeling, etc. In the model deepening stage, we mainly emphasize the feelings of spatial details, such as material texture, color, light, etc. Through the handheld interactive device, students can modify the spatial details to feel and compare the different effects in real time (Fig. 4). In the finalization stage, we complete the transition from space to scene. First, the 3D computer space model is imported into the VR renderer, and the user’s role and environment group are put into it for detailed scene processing, including optional furniture, plants, lamps, soft decoration, etc. Secondly, macro-environment in which the micro-environment is created, including simulated climate, sunshine, season, etc. Finally, the panoramic environment scene images are exported according to the pre-determined split-shot storyboard, and students perceive them through HMD (Fig. 5).

Student participate in the virtual environment through HMD and modified spatial details in real time by handheld interactive device.

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Students perceive panoramic environment scene images through HMD.

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Environmental Experience. People continuously walk through the space, knowing the space and themselves, and highlighting the sequence of time. This is called spatial experience. The complete 3D computer model is imported into VR-CAVE, where students place themselves in the panoramic scene and interact with it in real time, so that they can feel the user’s experience in the continuous space and time with the perspective of user role and behavioral streamline as clues (Fig. 6). CAVE (Computer Automatic Virtual Environment) is one of VR’s large immersive projection systems. It provides a room-sized cube projection display space, which can present different panoramic virtual environment for people to wander in it.

Students experience panoramic environment scene in VR-CAVE.

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3.3 Late Stage of Design + Scene Performance

Program Report. The final report of scheme takes the form of a scene performance. Students are placed in the VR stage to play the user roles. Their performing actions drive the panoramic environment scene to generate real-time visual and auditory changes, so that they can move in different directions and stimulate real-time perception and free wandering effect of users in the built environment (Fig. 7). The VR stage used for the course report was developed and designed by the author. It is based on the Unity3D, one of the game development platforms, applying the CAVE principle to the stage. The semi-enclosed stereo screen composed of the background and the ground presents a panoramic image in the same proportion as a live actor. Microsoft Kinect captures the actions of people through Kinect to realize the real-time interaction between people and the virtual environment scene. Or similar to the way of webcasting, the audience (design recipients) complete the understanding and experience of environment scene in the introduction and guidance of the video blogger(designer).

The final report of scheme takes the form of a scene performance in the VR stage.

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Evaluate Feedback. Designers invite and guide design recipients to perceive and experience environmental scenes through HMD, VR-CAVE and VR stage. In order to allow more design recipients to participate in evaluation of the scheme, the panoramic scene images of the sub-shots are captured in the VR renderer, and the panoramic roaming video is generated in the panoramic story generator software and shared through the QR code. Both present and non-present design participants can make panoramic observation and have wandering experience of environment through mobile terminal or “mobile phone+ VR glass” (Fig. 8). According to the design value formed in the early stage, the feedback of design recipients (audience) after environmental perception and experience is collected and summarized by combining electronic questionnaire and on-site interview.

Design participants can perceive panoramic environment scenes with Mobile phone through scanning the QR code.

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4.1 Eliminate the Barriers Among “Designers (Students)-Virtual Environment-Users”

Role immersion and its media tool VR help students wake up and use the “body”, an innate medium that connects and interacts with environment. The cyclical process is completed starting from the daily body diagram (inside-out) and finally returns to the body to examine (outside-in).

Role immersion helps the students to get out of themselves naturally, making sure to start with the user and always focus on the user throughout the design process. Design participants are in the same virtual environment, immersing themselves in scene performance to obtain intuitive and approximate perception and experience. Designers and design recipients including users have the same experiencing feelings, providing a possible way to eliminate the obstacles in their understanding and communicating of the schemes.

4.2 Focus on User Perception and Experience in Continuous Space and Time

Role immersion helps interior design teaching to transfer form focusing on physical and functional attributes to human-centered behavior and scenes, from the pursuit of fragmentary and instantaneous image visual perception to the users’ positive perception and experience in continuous space and time. This also urges the teaching of environmental design to break the inherent boundary brought out by the division of majors, condensing all the indoor and outdoor environment and elements into an organic system, which takes user as the center and core.

4.3 Classroom Teaching Atmosphere

Students who have grown up in the electronic information age are familiar with and fond of movies, games, VR, online live broadcast and other forms of popular entertainment. Through teaching, teachers found out that the methods and media tools involved in role immersion are easy for students to understand and interesting to operate. Role empathy and immersion experience are also the important reasons why the current multimedia entertainment methods attract young people. This has inspired teachers to take advantage of the situation, adapt to the characteristics of students in the new era, and integrate their favorite entertainment into design teaching, so as to improve the learning effect and participation enthusiasm in the class.

Integrating role immersion into general procedures of interior design is to solve the problem of estrangement and alienation among “designers (students)-virtual environment-users” in the teaching of interior design. It is pedagogical discussion on teaching method to realize the positive perception and experience of users in the continuous space and time. It still has the following two problems that need improvement and development. From the perspective of course teaching, the implementation of “role immersion” requires the support of certain equipment and site. Certain time and process are needed for students to get familiar with and adapt to the new methods and new media tools. What’s more, the experience of objects and space need to be quantified and qualitative. On the other hand, from the perspective of media tools, VR currently applied in the field of civilian teaching has matured in creating 3D digital environment objects of infinite imagination, but there are bottlenecks in comprehensive simulation of multi-channel sensory perception and comfort natural immersion and interaction. Although VR is closer to the physical perception of the environment than previous media tools, there is still a considerable gap in the real experience of the built environment compared to the personal experience. To sum up, only when the teaching methods and media tools are improved respectively and integrated with each other, can we continuously solve practical problems in design teaching and provide innovative ideas to meet the escalating market demands.