50. Exploring Future Stakeholder Feedback on Performance-Based Design Across the Virtuality Continuum

Communication of building project designs to stakeholders is important for successful implementation, but it is often difficult to get feedback from the future occupants of buildings. Yet, there is a growing trend in development of visualization tools to enhance participation of the public by effectively providing building information to stakeholders. However, we lack research evaluating the effectiveness of different building model visualization tools, and their performance with gathering feedback from future building occupants. This study compares the effectiveness of three visualization tools—360° panorama, virtual reality and augmented reality applications—with eliciting feedback from future occupants of a Living Building Challenge project at the Georgia Tech campus compared to more conventional 2D visualizations. The effectiveness comparison was conducted across the seven performance categories defined by the Living Building certification program. The results indicated that the visualization tools had significant differences in communicating information in the Equity, Energy, Health and Happiness, Place, and Water performance areas. This study provides a quantitative perspective on the effectiveness of visualization technologies across the virtuality continuum, and has implications for pre-occupancy surveys by exploring new feedback mechanisms that encourage users to participate in building design.