Exploring Mixed-methods Instruments for Performance Evaluation of Immersive Collaborative Environments

Abstract

Presently, there is a clear trend for both businesses and public institutions to move towards open or collaborative innovation. Nevertheless, engaging all stakeholders, especially users, for cocreating innovative solutions and usage scenarios is, as revealed in previous studies, not so obvious. We do believe that Immersive and Collaborative Environments (ICEs) based on the use of Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality technologies would be the right place for co-creating, exploring, experimenting and evaluating innovative ideas and concepts in order to quickly reach a common understanding. However, there is a need to design a proper method and instruments that would allow evaluating and comparing ICEs. Our previous paper presented the outcomes of an investigation to identifying and disentangling factors characterising a group immersion and collaboration in the context of co-creation. As a step further, this paper reports about our exploratory study towards the design of mixed methods quantitative and qualitative instruments for the evaluation of Immersive and Collaborative Environments (ICE) based on previously identified factors.