Development of Virtual Prototypes based on visuo/tactile interaction for the preliminary evaluation of consumer products usage

The paper describes an application based on low cost Virtual Reality technologies whose aim is to help designers in testing some functional aspects of their product concepts without the need of building physical mockups. In particular the application allows the designers to test aspects related to the usage of products. A case study that enables designer to verify the ergonomics aspects of the interactive Virtual Prototype (iVP) of a commercial fridge has been implemented. The iVP is based on a three-dimensional scale representation of the product and the use of a low cost user interface as input/output device. The paper describes the implementation of the iVP and the results of some preliminary user study that has been performed in order to validate the visuo/haptic interaction approach