The Use of Online Virtual Environments to Assess the Appeal of Interactive Elements within Buildings

Would a building be more appealing if it had interactive elements? Would that encourage people to visit it again, spend more time in it and promote it to others? Or would interactivity be a trivial presence in a building? Our previous study showed that people could concentrate better when surrounded by moving patterns that give an impression of moving walls. Whether people are more likely to return to architecture that is interactive and the appeal of interactive architecture over a non interactive counterpart has not been tested before. Before building such architecture we use simulation to gain an initial understanding. While our first study was carried out in a large surround screen projection environment, this study makes use of second life as a place where people can visit at will. Two identical buildings were designed for the experiment with one of them having interactive elements. They were then placed in an online virtual environment that is accessible by the public and they were monitored for four months. Initial results indicate that people prefer the interactive building over the non-interactive one. Appeal was measured by number of visitors, number of visits, time spent in each visit, number of groups that visited and returned to each building. We also used feedback provided by a separate focus group as well. The results demonstrate the importance of interactive elements in generating more interest and traffic for buildings and events.