A Virtual Reality Investigation of the Impact of Wallpaper Pattern Scale on Qualitative Spaciousness Judgments and Action-Based Measures of Room Size Perception

Abstract

Visual design elements influence the spaciousness of a room. Although wallpaper and stencil patterns are widely used in interior design, there is a lack of research on how these surface treatments affect people’s perception of the space. We examined whether the dominant scale of a wallpaper pattern (i) impacts subjective spaciousness judgments, or (ii) alters action-based measures of a room’s size. We found that both were true: participants reported lower subjective ratings of spaciousness in rooms covered with bolder (larger scale) texture patterns, and they also judged these rooms to be smaller than equivalently-sized rooms covered with finer-scaled patterns in action-based estimates of their egocentric distance from the opposing wall of the room. This research reinforces the utility of VR as a supporting technology for architecture and design, as the information we gathered from these experiments can help designers and consumers make better informed decisions about interior surface treatments.

Appendices

Appendix A: Written Instructions (Part 1)

You will be asked to perform two simple tasks multiple times for this experiment. Please try to perform each task at a natural and consistent pace. To make things easier to remember, we will give you the instructions for each task separately.

Preparation:

If you look at the carpet in our lab, you will see a red colored tape mark. Please stand on top of the tape so that your heels align with the back edge of the tape mark. (Note, you will not see this tape in the virtual reality environment). Once you are in the correct position, we will ask you to put on a head mounted display (HTC Vive). Please take some time to adjust the straps on the device so that it fits your head comfortably. We will then ask you to go through a brief calibration procedure to optimize the visuals for your individual head shape.

Task:

We will show you a series of virtual rooms and will ask you to rate how spacious they feel to you using a scale from 1 to 10. We will start out by showing you two rooms that you can use to help anchor this scale; you can consider the first room to be an example of a place that has a spaciousness of “1” and the second room to be an example of a place that has a spaciousness of “10”. We will then show you, one at a time, a series of 35 different rooms. As each room becomes visible, please briefly look around (without taking any steps) and then verbally tell us the number that best corresponds to how spacious the room feels to you. After we record your rating, the screen will briefly turn black and then a different virtual room will become visible. Please note that you will be seeing each room from a slightly different position. After you have provided a verbal rating for each of the 35 rooms we will ask you to take off the head-mounted display and have a short break. Following this break, we will show you a different set of 35 rooms and will ask you to provide another set of spaciousness ratings. If at any point, during any of the trials, you start to feel tired, distracted, impatient, or otherwise uncomfortable or unhappy, please let us know and we will pause the experiment to let you rest.

It is important for us to stress that there are no right or wrong answers in any part of this task. We are just very interested to know how each room makes you feel. What is important to the integrity of our experiment is that you treat each judgment independently and devote the same level of attention and care to all of the judgments you make. We expect that this portion of the experiment will take about 20–30 min in total, and after this part is completed we will give you a long break.

Please remember that you are always free to discontinue your participation in this experiment at any time, for any reason. In that event you would still be compensated with a gift card of value proportional to the time you spent.

Thank you in advance for your participation. Please ask us if you have any questions at any time.

Appendix B: Written Instructions (Part 2)

Task:

In this part of the experiment, we will ask you to wear a set of headphones (playing an ambient sound track) in addition to wearing the head-mounted display. Please start out by standing at the same red tape mark as before. After you have put on the head-mounted display, we will show you a series of 16 different virtual rooms. In each room, we will ask you to take visual aim at the opposite wall of the room (located directly in front of you), then close your eyes. After you have closed your eyes, please say “ready” and we will remove the walls of the room. We then ask that you keep your eyes closed and physically walk through the room that you remember until you feel that you have reached the exact location of where the wall used to be. Please stop walking when you feel that your head and eyes would be exactly inside of the wall, if the wall were still there. When you believe you have reached the target location, please keep your eyes closed and wait a few moments for us to record your position. We will then verbally direct you to walk, with your eyes still closed, in a circuitous path back to a different starting point for the next trial. Please be sure to keep your eyes closed for the entire time until we explicitly tell you to open them again.

In each trial, as you walk from your starting point to the wall, please try to imagine what the virtual room would look like as you move through it. It is very important to the integrity of our experiment that you do not use any artificial strategies to reach the wall, such as numerically estimating the distance from the starting point and then counting steps, or referring back to your memory of a previous room and abstractly pre-deciding to just take more or fewer steps than you did before, as that would invalidate our research. We need to stress that our goal in this experiment is not to “judge” the task performance of any individual against any sort of benchmark. Our goal is to better understand how the human brain interprets 3D space as people physically walk around with their eyes closed in virtual reality, and we cannot do that properly unless the described protocol is carefully followed. What is most important to us is that you let your intuition guide you, on each trial independently, in knowing when you have reached the wall of each virtual room. We expect that this portion of the experiment will take about 30–40 min.

End:

All data will be de-identified before it is analyzed, so we will not be able to share your individual results with you, as we will have no way to know them ourselves. But we will be happy to share our overall findings with you after the experiment has been completed. If you would like to receive a copy of any eventual publication on this experiment, please let us know.

Within two weeks from the completion date of the experiment, we will ask the Department of Computer Science to order a $10 Amazon gift card for you, in compensation for your participation. The email containing the gift certificate will come directly from amazon.com and will be sent to the email address you provided on the consent form. The gift card will not expire. If for any reason you fail to receive the email with the gift card, or you inadvertently lose the email before having a chance to use the gift card, you can always contact us to have the gift card re-issued, even after a delay of many months or years.

Please remember that you are always free to discontinue your participation in the experiment at any time, for any reason. In that event you would still be compensated with a gift card of value proportional to the time you spent.

Thank you in advance for your participation. Please ask us if you have any questions at any time.