**6. Interfaces for urban design**

Here, two different scenarios have presented the immersive quality and the nature of communication. The instruments possess their specific quality of perceptual understandings of the artefacts in the virtual environment and, they also offer different ways of generating those artefacts. These differences instigate the needs to develop the design tasks along with the possible interaction with the users.

## **6.1 Immersive instrument**

In 2019, an immersive virtual instrument developed to involve community people in the early stage of designing their neighbourhood [2, 14]. In the beginning, an initial preliminary survey conducted to identify the interest of the people. The research looked at a low-density suburb based in Wellington, New Zealand. The study looked at the local city council's charrette report to understand the design problem. The survey also helped to develop the design engagement tasks. These steps helped to understand the design engagement context. Then, in the instrument development stage, the designer had to select the right tool by empathising with users' possible interactions. This step was iterative. Several virtual software with different perceptual understandings 2D and 3D investigated to find a flexible tool for intuitive design generation of virtual artefacts. An immersive virtual instrument had been chosen, where the virtual 3D artefacts generated with the movement of the hand devices. A design collaboration set-up developed for participants to design as a team (**Figure 4**). Finally, a protocol analysis conducted to investigate the type of design communication [15]. **Figure 5** shows some moments of the immersive environment of the users and the participants from the community. The result showed that the employed immersive iterative 3D artefacts provide predictive

**Figure 4.** *Design collaboration unit.*

**Figure 5.** *Laypeople's participation in virtual co-urban design.*

#### *Design Thinking for Computer-Aided Co-Design in Architecture and Urban Design DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98938*

and explanatory power for understanding the interaction. The design discussion progressed when every designer's action produced visual information and initiated the next level of design action. It happened due to successful design communication media, which provided continuous visual feedback to the co-designer. The design task and the set-up of the experiment oriented designers to create building forms. Designers mutually construct conversation moment by moment as a form of interactivity through their use of verbal exchange and design action. The employed virtual environment (VE) design process reflected design actions and negotiations between designers. VE design communication happened due to the presence of design interactions. It resulted from human-computer interactions, where the computer produced 3D artefacts in the VE and eventually provided visual feedback to take design actions and initiated design discussion among designers.

If we see the instrument development stages, it can be seen that the success of the research depends on the type of software selected and the way design tasks was dealt. To do that, the designers had to empathise the possible ways of users' interaction. This step requires frequent testing with all other possible instruments. Developing the design task is another challenging part of such creative engagement. The task should have relevance to the design problem. The virtual representation of the urban environment also had the quality to deliver the resemblance of the 3D artefacts with the actual urban setting. Thus, the participants felt that they designed for their future neighbourhood.
