Co-Creation Tool in Virtual Reality

The innovation of future technologies such as training of medical first esponders in Extended Reality (XR) can be achieved through methods of co-creation. Virtual Reality (VR) provides great potential for engaging multiple stakeholders like researchers, designers, engineers and end-users in the collaborative and creative process of co-creation. The aim of this thesis is to implement a collaborative co-creation tool in VR for designing and discussing complex scenarios such as mass casualty incidents. A prototype for the Meta Quest 2 is implemented that enables multiple users to express potential scenarios of accidents by creating virtual objects from an inventory system in VR. A total of four experiments, including 20 participants, were conducted to investigate the potential collaboration, in particular workspace awareness, and the overall usability of the system. Additionally, the potential of geometric shapes such as cones, spheres or cubes for expressing additional scene objects in complex scenarios was examined. The quantitative and qualitative results outline the strengths and weaknesses of the prototype regarding the current support for workspace awareness and areas of improvement are discussed. Furthermore, the results highlight that geometric shapes provide great potential for expressing additional scene objects. However, further annotation features are required to support the meaning of abstract shapes within virtual scenario.