PrismArch has been build based on the following design choices: a) to use the Unreal Engine as the ecosystem that will develop the singular design space, allowing all users of PrismArch to work and collaborate while immersed in photorealistic environments; b) to establish the theory of Sphering Levels for regulating user roles, managing access control, and ensuring privacy jurisdiction; c) to adopt and extent the open source version of Speckle Systems as the most mature solution for interconnecting different software applications (Rhino, Revit, SAP2000, etc) with the PrismArch application lying within Unreal.
At the same time, we have made significant progress in the development of: a) an AI-assisted content generation system, where the user can cooperate with the AI to generate design solutions during the conceptual stages of design, and b) the generation of machine-learned designer models that discover patterns in the designers’ behaviour, allowing for personalised enhancements to the aforementioned design suggestions system, or other parts of the PrismArch platform. The services developed as part of the AI-related activities have been integrated inside the prototype implementation of PrismArch.
In the domain of cognition aspects and the development of usability guidelines in VR-aided design environments two studies have been undertaken. In the first study that was conducted online, participants learned a multilevel, multiroom virtual building by navigating through the rooms, and were later tested on their spatial knowledge acquisition using sketch maps. In the second study, architects had to perform design review/evaluation tasks and were monitored through an eye-tracking device, with respect to their view/navigation patterns (e.g. frequent changes of different viewports, zooming, panelling, etc). These studies have resulted in eighty-three (83) guidelines covering various aspects relevant for design, user experience, user-interactivity, collaboration and other topics.
Moreover, a number of evaluation sessions were conducted where testers were invited to join hands-on sessions of using the PrismArch prototype and experiment with a number of user scenarios that were pre-specified for them. Following, the testers were asked to fill in a relevant questionnaire as well as participate in interviews with the consortium partner leading the evaluation process.
Finally, our total audience reach form our online promotional activities were more than 60K, also having a significant estimated reach in our main target groups from our networking activities.
