VirtualSupermarketDesignerEmil Rosenlund Høeg & Luca Mangano

ehaeg12@student.aau.dk & lmanga12@student.aau.dkDept. of Media Technology, Aalborg University, Denmark

AbstractThe ever-growing interest in the market for VRapplications, not only motivated the relevanceof the purpose and concept behind the applica-tion, but also generated the need for more user-centred development techniques. This projecthas been developed as a Virtual Supermar-ket Simulator in collaboration with AAU Inte-grated Food Studies as a customizable toolmodel for studying consumer behaviour, choiceand decision-making. With a strong focus onpre-existing methods of 3D interaction and userinterfaces[1], we have developed and evalu-ated a VR-system serving the overall purpose.The system was tested using relevant usability-characteristics with the overall purpose of test-ing the efficiency, effectiveness and utility of theapplication as well as including screen record-ings and post-test questionnaires. The testgave us circumstantial evidence towards an-swering the overall problem formulation, andgave us valuable results that can help improvethe proposed solution for future prospects.

IntroductionOur project is part of the development of the Vir-tual Foodscape Simulator (VFS) system, whichis aimed to teach and help users develop properhabits when buying perishables. Foosions alsoinvolves a tool for food outlet designers to un-derstand and study consumers behaviour in re-gards to the placement of products on shelves.We explore the possibility of enhancing real-lifeexperiments with a virtual substitute. The no-tion of a customizable tool model for studyingconsumer behavior, choice, and decision-making, in a virtual emulated environment,that can greatly improve the feasibility andaffordability of preexisting real-life methods.

List of Requirements:

I Dynamic reconfiguration of groceries and in-ventory

I Novel VR interactionI A customizable tool for researcher and de-

signers of food outlets

ObjectiveThe aim of the research was to create a theo-retical framework for understanding concepts ofusability with unconventional methods of 3D in-teraction, and evaluate the affordances of thesystem according to predetermined usability-characteristics[2][3]:

Learnability: How easy/hard are thetasks to initially accomplish for noviceusers.

Effectiveness: Accuracy of task perfor-mance, amount of errors.

Efficiency: Once users are familiar withthe system, how fast and accurate canthe user complete tasks.

Errors: The amount of errors the usermake, how serious are these errors,and how easily can the user overcomeand recover from the errors.

Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to usethe interface.

Virtual Environment

ResultsThe tool was evaluated according to previousmentioned usability-characteristics with hierar-chical task analysis and measured with time-completion and post-test questionnaire. Re-sponses were evaluated using content anal-ysis and validated using inter-coder reliabilitytesting[4]. In total there were 17 participants(15 male and 2 female), all of them students orPhD students between 23-41 (Mean = 28.76,SD = 5.83).

Fig. 1: Closed-ended responses

Fig. 2: Total time spend (reading and completingtasks, and task performance alone.

ConclusionThe tool was developed for designers and cos-tumers respectively, but were tested on thesame sample group since the initial usabilityand functionality needed to be assessed. thetests mainly showed that participants felt lim-ited by the low amount of functionalities that thesystem included, and they suggested a seriesof tweaks and improvements that would posi-tively affect the experience. On the other hand,results showed that we laid rather solid basisin order to build a stronger and effective sys-tem. In addition to this, changes such as an im-proved GUI, higher resolution textures, and anoverall refurbished interaction techniques areneeded in order to bring the system one stepcloser to the final goal of having it a commer-cially viable solution.

References[1] Doug E. Bowman et al: 3D user interfaces:

theory and practice, Addison-Wesley, 2004

[2] Jakob Nielsen: Usability 101: Introductionto usability, 2003

[3] Yvonne Rogers et al: Interaction Design:Beyond Human - Computer Interaction, Wi-ley, 2011

[4] Thomas Bjørner: Qualitative Methods forConsumer Research, Hans Reitzel, 2015,