User Centered Virtual Prototyping: Do Users Feel Real with Virtual Prototypes?

User centered virtual prototyping emphasizes human-product interaction and the function of virtual prototyping in product design and analysis. This implies the process of simulating the user, the product, and their combined interaction in software through different stages of product design, and the quantitative analysis of usability and ergonomy of the product. Testing prototypes in virtual reality requires virtual objects to fairly evoke the same psychological effects in a user like an equivalent real product. The look and feel of surfaces, and the accessibility and manipulability of virtual objects, however, isn’t the same in all aspects of interaction with virtual prototypes. Actually, user centered virtual prototyping can only focus on immersive aspects of human-product interaction during the testing of usability and ergonomy of virtual products. This paper shows under what circumstances user feel real with virtual prototypes. We will concentrate on visual and haptical feedback throughout perceiving and using virtual objects. Evaluation of possible immersive effects was made by test users’ physiological parameters and ratings concerning the psycho-physical law of perception.