Education on human centered design using virtual environment

Recently, the importance of human centered design is often pointed out in various manufacturing fields. However, it has not been practiced enough as a design method in the actual product design. In this study, conventional CAD system and virtual reality environment were connected and they were applied to the design education in the graduate school. In this framework, the user can perform kansei and emotional evaluation based on the sense of body in the virtual environment as well as analyze the shape and structure of the designed model using the CAD system. This framework was applied to the class of design education, and the effectiveness and the problem were evaluated through the task of designing chair. From the result, though the integration such as transmitting or sharing data between both tools was not realized enough, this system could effectively be used to evaluate the shape and the size of the designed model based on the sense of body, and the effectiveness for the education on human centered design was shown.