Design and Evaluation of a Virtual Reality-Based Car Configuration Concept

The Daimler AG provided a concept preview towards the individualization of interior trim parts at the International Motor Show in September 2017, which was named unleash the color. At the show, a tablet computer was used to enable the configuration of a car. The configuration output, in turn, could be either directly previewed on the tablet computer or experienced using a virtual reality application. However, as the car configuration procedure is usually performed iteratively, a user experiences frequent context switches of the used software application, which often leads to an embittered perceived user experience and usability. To remedy these drawbacks, one promising approach constitutes the idea to integrate the configuration procedure into a proper virtual reality application. The work at hand presents Xconcept, which draws upon various state-of-the-art approaches from the field of human-computer interaction to provide a suitable car configuration procedure based on a virtual reality setting. Among other important factors, one fundamental goal of Xconcept constitutes the perceived user experience independently of age, gender, or previous virtual reality experiences. To evaluate whether or not this can be achieved with Xconcept, we conducted a study with employees of the Daimler AG. Although the results of the study reveal that with rising age, the rating of the Xconcept deteriorates, the overall user experience and usability has been rated positively. Interestingly,
gender and previous experiences with virtual reality applications had no significant effect on the rating of the user experience. Altogether, Xconcept shows valuable insights to ease the car configuration procedure based on a proper virtual reality setting.