External routine: organizational meeting routine

Thesis 162 material properties of the device shut them off from their surrounding environment. Therefore, they started to model and render 3D models using the new plug-in, but instead of putting on the head-mounted display they simply viewed the rendered model on a traditional monitor. In this manner, they could discover errors while also being able to collaborate with their colleagues and consult non-digital artifacts during the design process.

Because they used these more immersive ostensive patterns at different times, the materiality of the head-mounted display could be circumvented due to both the flexibility of the technology and human actors involved in the organizational design routine. This was especially due to the plug-in’s compatibility with both the displays and the actors’ technical competences which allowed them to appropriate the technology in a way that suited their goals. This in turn meant, that the ostensive patterns could be used by the actors as a guide for their future performances and as a way to account for and refer to past and current performances which match with their goals.

Thesis 163 immersiveness provided clients and users with an intuitive understanding of scale and depth as they could look around in a natural manner while being less aware of their surrounding environment, when they wore the head-mounted display during meetings.

As they started to use the head-mounted display, see imbrication 5 and 6, they discovered that while the head-mounted display had provided clients and users with an intuitive understanding of e.g. the scale and depth of a church project, the preparations needed for designing the 3D images that the head-mounted display used was simply too laborious. Consequently, a new human agency was initiated by the architects and engineers which sought a way to make meeting participants understand the scale and depth of projects intuitively but effectively. To remedy this lack of efficiency, they acquired a new plug-in which enabled them to not only look around in 3D images but also to walk around in 3D models.

However, while this allowed them to become more effective and at the same time let clients and users better understand the scale and depth of 3D models of future projects, they had lost another aspect. Especially since their existing head-mounted display was not compatible with this new plug-in, they had to disregard the head-mounted display and thus they had lost the intuitive understanding of scale and depth which immersion provides to users. Hence, in imbrication 7 and 8 they accordingly set a new goal: to make clients and users understand depth and scale in an intuitive way, in turn easing communication between the meeting participants. And to overcome the constraint they see in their current technology, they extended the new plug-in, that generated 3D models, with a new type of head-mounted display. Now users could experience the buildings in real dimensions and enjoy the psychological experience of being there – just like their first attempt with the simpler head-mounted display allowed its users to do. Consequently, the potential for experiencing a more intuitive way of the 3D model was more likely. Furthermore, the head-mounted display and the plug-in enable the architects to communicate design changes and decisions to clients and in a more intuitive manner. This in turn helped the architects and engineers to make the design process more transparent and easier to understand for especially non-professional clients. And by being able to do so, they avoid losing the trust of their clients because they can experience themselves that their concerns are recognized. The head-mounted display, as well as the flexible technological infrastructure it relied on, allowed the clients and users to achieve a more intuitive understanding of 3D models, resulting in more feedback from the clients as well as an increase in trust.

Thesis 164 As the ostensive pattern of which the head-mounted display was a part became a reliable alternative, they discovered some constraints with this new and more immersive technology. In particular imbrication 9 and 10 show that they saw the following three constraints when using the head-mounted display. First, while the materiality of the head-mounted display effectively immersed its users and helped them to intuitively understand the design or the changes that were made, they could not refer to the other artifacts in the room nor communicate with the other people present as their sight and, at times, their audio senses were shut off. This made it difficult for the architects and engineers to understand specific problems that the clients and users pointed out, even if the architects and engineers were following the user’s view of the head-mounted display on a PC monitor, as the professionals could not experience scale and depth in the same intuitive way as the immersed user. Second, because of the materiality of the head-mounted display, its inclusiveness, the user of the display cannot see any of the physical artifacts in his or her immediate surroundings nor interpret the body language of the meeting participants in the room.

Third, when clients and users were using the head-mounted display, the architects and engineers could not guide them or point out where the clients and users should focus. Without guidance, the feedback was often not relevant at that specific time of the project or was simply just irrelevant to the project as a whole, which lead to an inefficient organizational design routine. On the one hand, while the architects and engineers could simply disregard this feedback, it might, in time, also lead to a loss in trust between the two parties, potentially jeopardizing their collaboration and in the end the project as a whole. Due to these identified constraints, the architects and engineers now set a new goal which would allow them to facilitate an intuitive understanding between meeting participants while the user of the head-mounted display should be able to interact with the surrounding environment so they could guide him or her and get relevant feedback.

Accordingly, during meetings with clients and users they started to use the head-mounted display more mindfully while to a larger degree making use of a traditional PC monitor only. In particular, at specific times during the meetings, the architects and engineers looked and walked around in the 3D models using a traditional PC display only, and at other times, they introduced the head-mounted display together with or without the traditional PC monitor. By using the head-head-mounted display and the PC monitor mindfully at strategic points in time, they facilitated an intuitive understanding between meeting participants while the user of the head-mounted display was able to interact with the surrounding environment so they could guide him or her and get relevant feedback.

Thesis 165 In summary, the agency of the two displays, the head-mounted display and the PC monitor, as well as the plug-in helped them to make clients get an intuitive understanding. The displays through their immersive capabilities and the plug-in by enabling the clients and users to discover the 3D models in the immersive VE by letting them walk and look around in a natural manner.

The architects and engineers thus made use of the immersive capabilities of the head-mounted display during situations where less collaboration was needed, and were therefore not constrained by its materiality, its inclusiveness.