Asessing usability of virtual reality for basic design education

Being an emerging technology, virtual reality is used in a wide range of fields such as medicine, gaming, psychology and sociology. There are also wide range of researches that compare traditional and digital methodologies in design education. However, in design education, there is a limited research into the implementation of virtual reality (VR). Therefore, this thesis focuses on the usability of virtual reality in design education, especially during problem-solving activity in basic design education. This thesis presents the basic design education literature in terms of digital approaches, virtual reality technologies, usability criteria and also technology acceptance model. In order to to analyze the usability of virtual reality in basic design education, an experimental study conducted with 20 first year interior architecture and architecture students in the Spring semester of 2017-2018 academic year, at Bilkent University. It is found that there is a statistically significant difference in terms of intention to use and perceived enjoyment between the VR group and paper-based group. Moreover, there is also a statistically significant effectiveness difference between of VR and paper-based environment. As a result of that, it is stated that VR can support problem-solving activity of basic design education.