Being More Focused and Engaged in Firefighting Training: Applying User-Centered Design to VR System Development
Seunggon Jeon, Jae‐Ho Han, Yonggeol Jo, Kyungsik Han · 2019
Although virtual reality (VR) programs to provide firefighting training continue to be developed and adopted, our investigation with 15 firefighters indicates that a current VR training system tends to convey behavioral tips and does not sufficiently reflect actual firefighters’ needs and realities in the field. It often provides somewhat simplified fire simulations and actually lowers the effectiveness of the training. In this paper, we employ Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) methods to examine and identify core elements in firefighting scenarios and develop a VR system that incorporates such elements. We evaluate our system with respect to presence and three design components of the VR simulation (i.e., reality, meaning, play) through a user study with 22 participants. Our study results demonstrate greater user experience and perception toward the four elements in firefighting training with our VR system compared to the existing one. We discuss design implications (e.g., move control, degree of freedom, sight hindrance by smoke, unexpected events) of our study that are expected to help implement and provide an effective VR training system for firefighters.