Improving decision making
Immersive technologies can play a crucial role in facilitating better decision making. We work with urban planners and product developers to use immersive technologies to increase user engagement and transform decision making.
We aim to help organisations understand how the expanding range of technologies can support, not replace, their decision making processes. Our research capabilities include:
- Using immersive technologies to allow decision makers to experience the outcomes of choices.
- Working with companies to help produce virtual prototypes. This helps to make testing and redesign processes faster, more cost effective and more user-focused.
- Investigating how immersive experiences can be used to promote behavioural change. We are exploring the practical and ethical implications of influencing decision making by citizens. In particular, we are focusing on promoting environmentally-friendly lifestyles.
- Drawing on the expertise within the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics (LIDA) to analyse ‘big data’. We are working to develop an evidence base for innovative co-design and virtual testing. This can be applied to individual products through to large infrastructure projects.
The potential for product design is huge. Immersive technologies can be used to help fashion designers simulate how a new fabric might drape or help medical device companies understand how a new technology might be used.
At a strategic level, urban planners can test approaches to road safety or urban design, simulating different scenarios and using the data generated to provide evidence for decision making or policy change.