Cakevr: A social virtual reality (vr) tool for co-designing cakes

Abstract

Cake customization services allow clients to collaboratively personalize cakes with pastry chefs. However, remote (e.g., email) and in-person co-design sessions are prone to miscommunication, due to natural restrictions in visualizing cake size, decoration, and celebration context. This paper presents the design, implementation, and expert evaluation of a social VR application (CakeVR) that allows a client to remotely co-design cakes with a pastry chef, through real-time realistic 3D visualizations. Drawing on expert semi-structured interviews (4 clients, 5 pastry chefs), we distill and incorporate 8 design requirements into our CakeVR prototype. We evaluate CakeVR with 10 experts (6 clients, 4 pastry chefs) using cognitive walkthroughs, and fnd that it supports ideation and decision making through intuitive size manipulation, color/favor selection, decoration design, and custom celebration theme ftting. Our fndings provide recommendations for enabling co-design in social VR and highlight CakeVR's potential to transform product design communication through remote interactive and immersive co-design.