Abstract
The effectiveness of five display technologies for supporting a collaborative workspace design review was compared. Participants searched for design flaws in a model of the front dashboard of a vehicle including an in-vehicle navigation system. The display types were 2D CRT, 3D CRT, 3D via Curved plasma display, a large DataWall display, and a cave automatic virtual environment (CAVE). Detection accuracy, time, and usability measures were obtained. The results indicated that detection accuracy was higher for 3D CRT and Curved displays than the 2D display or more immersive DataWall and CAVE displays. Additionally, a speed-accuracy trade-off was observed such that detection time was longer for 3D CRT and Curved displays than for 2D, or the more immersive displays. Subjective measures revealed that participants' comfort and confidence level was lower with the 2D displays than the 3D displays. Lack of sufficient training time is likely to have affected detection accuracy with the more immersive 3D displays. Overall, the use of the 3D CAD model on a standard CRT or a Curved display was the most cost-effective for collaborative design review.