Visual spatial learning of complex object morphologies through interaction with virtual and real-world data

TL;DR

This study examines how different modalities of exploring complex objects, like 2D images, 3D models, and real objects, affect people's ability to understand and reproduce their structure, highlighting the advantages of digital 3D exploration.

Contribution

It provides new insights into how various representation modalities influence perceptual understanding of complex object morphologies, especially comparing digital and real-world interactions.

Findings

Digital 3D exploration outperforms real-world manipulation for experts.

Performance varies significantly between modalities and expertise levels.

Morphological cues differ across representation modalities, affecting perceptual accuracy.

Abstract

Conceptual design relies on extensive manipulation of morphological properties of real or virtual objects.This study investigates the nature of the perceptual information that could be retrieved from different representation modalities to reproduce structural properties of a complex object by drawing . The abstract and complex object (tensegrity simplex) was presented to two study populations (design experts/architects and non-experts) in three different representation modalities (2D image view explored visually only, digital 3D model explored visually using a computer mouse, the real object explored visually and manually. After viewing and exploring, observers had to draw the most critical parts of the structure by hand into a 2D reference frame. The results reveal a considerable performance advantage of digital 3D model exploration compared with real-world 3D object manipulation in the expert population.The results are discussed in terms of the specific nature of morphological cues made available through the different representation modalities.