Designing Airport Interiors with 3D Visualizations

Understandings of user-centered design incorporate the need to include users and stakeholders in the design process from early on, employing visual and 'enactment' principles and approaches. Virtual Reality (VR) and 3D visualizations offer such opportunities for enhanced 'enactments' of proposed designs through immersion. Within PASSME H2020 European project, 3D design visualizations for novel concepts for an airport interior were developed and tested early on with users to identify the best interior design principles among the alternatives considered to reduce passenger stress, waiting times and improve overall Passenger Experience (PAX). Using the potential of VR, concepts were tested with users and we identified passenger emotional and design-driven responses to boarding gates and lounge visualizations to inform the iterative development of in-situ passenger-centric interventions. We elicited both emotional, practical and operational needs and requirements for improving PAX within airports and found out that users can use VR to imagine interaction scenarios within the proposed design products.