Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering

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Pre-Evaluation method of the experiential

architecture based on multidimensional
physiological perception

Wanyu Pei, Xiangmin Guo & Tiantian Lo

To cite this article: Wanyu Pei, Xiangmin Guo & Tiantian Lo (2022): Pre-Evaluation method of
the experiential architecture based on multidimensional physiological perception, Journal of Asian
Architecture and Building Engineering, DOI: 10.1080/13467581.2022.2074019

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13467581.2022.2074019

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Group on behalf of the Architectural
Institute of Japan, Architectural Institute of
Korea and Architectural Society of China.

Published online: 22 May 2022.

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JOURNAL OF ASIAN ARCHITECTURE AND BUILDING ENGINEERING
https://doi.org/10.1080/13467581.2022.2074019

Pre-Evaluation method of the experiential architecture based on

multidimensional physiological perception
Wanyu Pei, Xiangmin Guo and Tiantian Lo
School of Architecture, Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), Shenzhen, China

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

With a people-oriented principle, contemporary architectural design regards the users’ spiritual Received 29 November 2021
and emotional satisfaction as fundamental needs. However, it was tough for designers to Accepted 2 May 2022
collect and quantify the users’ accurate perception of a design scheme in the past. This KEYWORDS
research aims to propose a method incorporating virtual reality (VR) and sensors, and wearable Experiential architecture;
technology to pre-evaluate the impact of spatial schemes on user experience. Specifically, it Pre-evaluation;
collected users’ physiological signals to detect emotions and eye-tracking data to understand multidimensional
visual attention during their roaming in a VR environment. An empirical design scheme for the physiological signals;
International School of Design’s outdoor spaces in Harbin Institute of Technology was adopted Eye-tracking; virtual reality
as a study case. For this purpose, multiple groups of contrast schemes were established in VR
for users to experience. Participants’ physiological signals were collected and analyzed using
the paired-samples T-test method. Subjective questionnaire data were also collected to assist
in the verification of objective physiological data. The results showed that designers could
evaluate the experience of the designs by comparing user reactions through analysis of
physiological signals. Simultaneously, this evaluation method explores a feasible way for
designers to promote architecture designs to be more humanized and scientific.

1. Introduction
The relationship between human perception and the
physical environment is always a central issue for archi­
tecture design. Architects generally agree that the user
experience, which can be used as feedback informa­
tion, plays a crucial role in improving design schemes
and realizing design concepts (Dias et al. 2014). The
experiential architectural design looks at how users will
interact with the space and builds the environment
around human needs and experience. One of the
proofs of good “Experiential architecture” is that it
can convey the metaphor and concept of the design
to users. That means the space users, who know little
about the history, design intention, and construction
techniques of the building can still perceive the infor­
mation the designer wants to convey when experien­
cing the space. Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of
perception (Mooney 2012) grants a central role of the
world to the human body because perception is
a prerequisite for understanding the external environ­
ment (Cañas 2019). Since the 1960s, the decline of
Modernism, research on the relationship between

CONTACT Tiantian Lo skyduo@gmail.com School of Architecture, Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), Shenzhen 518055 ,China
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group on behalf of the Architectural Institute of Japan, Architectural Institute of Korea and
Architectural Society of China.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
2 W. PEI ET AL.
human and built environment has become further
influential. Studies were concerned with the mutual
interaction of individuals and the architectural spaces
(Leavitt 1988; Rapoport 2016). The development direc­
tion of contemporary architecture design is gradually
being transferred from designer-oriented to user-
oriented (Cho and Kim 2017), which make the design
prioritizes human perception and experience feeling of
the building environment. One of the essential respon­
sibilities of architects is designing experiences in
spaces (Soltani and Kirci 2019). This means architects
need to intentionally use design elements to elicit an
emotional connection to space and immerse users in
a narrative, using colour, light, and form composition
to communicate spirit, quality, and character (Spence
2020).
However, too often, some buildings could not
match the original aspirations of architects. Once the
building space is built, changing or rebuilding will
cause higher-than-expected resource consumption.
To avoid the significant deviation between the users’
experience and the architect’s design objective, in the
planning and design stages of building, the prelimin­
ary evaluation of the design scheme is essential to
promote a sustainable and humanized building envir­
onment. During the design process of the architectural
environment, one of the assignments of architects is
Combining rationality and emotion and provide
a positive spatial experience for users. Hence, archi­
tects need to get users’ accurate perceptions in the
design spaces to evaluate and improve the schemes.
The experiential user data collected by researchers
allows architects to understand users’ needs and
expectations and create a further harmonious relation­
ship between humans and the built environment
(Horayangkura 2012; Leavitt 1988). However, describ­
ing perception is more challenging than the descrip­
tion of physical environment. It always involves
psychological characteristics, which are qualitative fac­
tors (Husserl 1997) and could be challenging to
describe accurately (Li et al. 2020). It was tough for
architects to collect and quantize users’ perception
feedback in the past, especially before construction.
Heilig (1992) believed human attention could be
influenced by various senses, including vision, audi­
tion, olfaction, touch (occupy 70%, 20%, 5%, 4%
respectively), and so on (Rouch 1985). In addition, the
users (with normal vision) mainly obtain spatial infor­
mation, which is processed to recognize space through
vision (Kiefer et al. 2017). Hence, previous research on
the relationship between architectural spaces and
human perception largely depends on visual percep­
tion and focused on surveying occupants after com­
plete construction (Hedge et al. 1989). For example,
the “Likert scale” and “Factor analysis” were used as
visual evaluation tools to obtain users’ quantifiable
psychological feelings and reveal their aesthetic
preferences (Rogge, Nevens, and Gulinck 2007). At
that time, the research used traditional techniques,
such as questionnaires (Caicedo and Van Beuzekom
2006), scales or verbal protocols for self-report (Mauss
and Robinson 2009), group discussion and interview
(Annemans et al. 2014), video content analysis and
behaviour observations. These survey methods were
time-consuming and prone to errors introduced by the
subjective feelings of the surveyed. While these tradi­
tional methods can provide valuable subjective
insights, they are less effective in making objective
comparisons between multiple designs schemes
(Wingler et al. 2020). Other researchers have attempted
to analyze users’ perceptions and emotions through
“Overt behavior” such as facial expressions (Cowie et al.
2008; Li and Elmaghraby 2014) and body gesture
recognition (Kapur et al. 2005). However, the accuracy
and objectivity of “overt behavior” are still controver­
sial. For example, people can hide their emotions by
changing expressions. In recent years, perception tests
combined with biosensing and information technol­
ogy can provide an opportunity to detect and analyze
cognition and feeling. Psycho-physiological measure­
ments on the signals emitted from the central and
peripheral nervous systems are currently several of
the essential techniques to get users perception
(Yadav et al. 2018). The sensors such as those collecting
peripheral physiological signals, wearable devices and
eye trackers present an opportunity to capture users’
physiologic parameters and cognitive states in a real-
time and non-intrusive way. Compared with the former
two kinds of evaluation methods, using bio-sensors to
collect physiological data and recognize users’ percep­
tions is a generally accepted and objective measure­
ment method at present (Li et al. 2015). Although the
neurophysiological recording analysis would require
even more time than the questionnaire survey, the
collected physiological data are not easily controlled
by people subject awareness because these data
reflect the activity of the physiological systems caused
by real emotion change.
The primary work of applying the perception test to
the building environment is to prepare the experimen­
tal setting. The experimental environment could be
divided into two categories. One is the natural envir­
onment, and the other is the experimental environ­
ment which can be constructed by adopting
technologies such as VR and augmented reality (AR)
etc. VR is a unique tool (Liu et al. 2020) that allows
high-quality visualization of architectural space before
construction. Besides, quantifying the human percep­
tion of architectural spaces need to create controlled
testing environments (Franz, von der Heyde, and
Bülthoff 2005) in which architects can alter and test
the architectural design elements individually. The
recent advancement of some technologies like VR pro­
vides opportunities to offer controlled environments
 JOURNAL OF ASIAN ARCHITECTURE AND BUILDING ENGINEERING 3

Figure 1. Methods and techniques in human perception and the built environment (Source: adapted from Karakas and Yildiz
2020).

with a high degree of realism for users and architects
to replicate rapidly and alter testing conditions flexibly
(Heydarian et al. 2015; Zou, Li, and Cao 2017). Some
studies combined VR and bio-sensors to identify the
spaces that may lead to negative emotional experi­
ences (stress, anxiety and fear) (Dias et al. 2014;
Engelniederhammer, Papastefanou, and Xiang 2019;
Lee et al. 2020;) and compared the alterations between
cognition and affect in real and virtual environments
(Skorupka 2009; Westerdahl et al. 2006). Afterwards,
proposed virtual reality technology as a strong poten­
tial psychological and architectural research tool
(Kuliga et al. 2015). VR provides a controllable environ­
ment for testing unbuilt design schemes and provides
the possibility to study various architectural spaces
quickly (Jansen-Osmann 2002). Besides, virtual envir­
onments could awaken users’ emotions, such as relaxa­
tion or anxiety (Marín-Morales et al. 2018). The
application of VR in buildings will enable users to
interact more strongly with the design environment,
eliciting emotional and psychological responses
(López-Tarruella Maldonado et al. 2016). Many
researchers have found that VR can assist in assessing
users’ emotional reactions to gain a more precise
understanding of the designed architecture spaces
(Nikolic 2007; Paes, Arantes, and Irizarry 2017) and
improve design decision-making. Integrating VR and
psycho-physiological measurements (Figure 1) effec­
tively quantify human perception and combines it
into architectural design and evaluation.
Physiological changes are the sympathetic nervous
system’s response (SNS). The SNS will automatically acti­
vate physiological responses when the body perceives
an environmental stimulus, including accelerated heart
rate, dilated pupils, and increased sweat gland activity
(Levenson 2014). This autonomous response can be
triggered by many emotional reactions (such as surprise,
fear, anger or stress) and is difficult to hide. In addition,
the experimental result has shown that some auto­
nomic nervous system activities are not culture-
specific; that is, the emotional differences reflected by
autonomic nervous system activities have cross-cultural
consistency (Levenson et al. 1992). Hence, it is recently
becoming prevalent in using ambulatory sensors to
measure objective physiological signals and analyze
the emotional reaction (Zeile et al. 2015) (Figure 2a).
Skin conductance, heart rate, and blood volume were
valid and extensively utilized emotional arousal

Figure 2. Research technologies: (a) ErgoLAB physiological sensors for EDA and PPG; (b) Tobii Pro VR eye-trackers.
4 W. PEI ET AL.
measures (Dawson, Schell, and Filion 2017; Wac and
Tsiourti 2014). For example, Radwan and Ergan used
a data collection platform named Body Sensor
Networks (BSN) to record the subjects’ physiological
metrics (i.e., heart rate, facial muscle movement) in
interior architectural spaces (Radwan and Ergan 2017).
Some other studies collected some physiological data
(i.e., skin conductance, skin temperature) to compre­
hend people’s emotional states in urban built environ­
ments (Engelniederhammer, Papastefanou, and Xiang
2019; Lee et al. 2020).
In addition to emotional responses, visual percep­
tion testing is one of the essential psycho-
physiological measurement technologies in the
research field of neuroarchitecture. Eye-tracking is an
established technique standardly utilized in medicine,
psychology, usability and User Experience (UX) (Junker
and Nollen 2018). Eye-tracking was used to obtain
visual evaluation information of spatial design in VR
and fused with users’ location data (Jacob and Karn
2003, p.; Zhang, Jeng, and Zhang 2018). The main
purpose of the eye-tracking application is to measure
the users’ attention and identify the specific parts of
a design (Yousefi et al. 2015) by monitoring the parti­
cipants’ attention towards the Area of Interest (AOI).
However, for architecture applications that need the
immersive representation of a design model, this kind
of set-up used not work, and few studies focused on
using eye-tracking for architectural design (Aries et al.,
2010; Hasanzadeh, Esmaeili, and Dodd 2016).
Recently, with the fast technology development, some
software is compatible with HTC Vive Pro (Figure 2b) and
available to support the analysis and visualization of eye-
tracking data gathered in VR studies. The most important
thing is to create interactive virtual environments to
measure the subjects’ attention when experiencing var­
ious architectural designs (Du et al. 2018; Radwan and
Ergan 2017). Some researchers have begun to use eye-
tracking to understand users’ visual perception in archi­
tectural design (Tang n.d.; Zhang, Jeng, and Zhang 2018).
Both the physiological test of emotion and eye-tracking
measurement are not easily subjectively control by peo­
ple, which is generally accepted as a suitable measure­
ment method. These two methods reflect human
perception from different aspects. Combining these two
technologies will help understand a depth physiological
detection mechanism. However, combining eye-tracking
test and physiological test has not previously been con­
sidered by existed research especially on how to support
the evaluation of building space design. Even though
some previous research (Higuera-Trujillo, Llinares, and
Macagno 2021) has used biometric sensors and VR as
helpful technologies to quantify users’ perceptions in
building space, little research has proposed applying
the perceptual measurement to assist the pre-
evaluation of design objectives and practical design
stage. Besides, there is a lack of empirical research
integrating objective physiological signals into an evalua­
tion workflow to improve architectural schemes in the
design stage. It would therefore be of interest to combine
biometric sensors and eye trackers to get both emotional
and visual perception feedback of users and support the
improvement and evaluation of spatial design before
construction.
This research integrally applied multidimensional phy­
siological detection, including psycho-physiological and
eye-movement measurements, which can reflect the
users’ emotional state and the causes to evaluate the
architectural spatial design. The combination of emotion
and eye movement knowledge will contribute to con­
structing a more comprehensive perception evaluation
method. The research presented in this paper aims to
propose a method of integrating virtual reality and sen­
sors and wearable technology to a pre-evaluate spatial
scheme based on the design goals of the human
experience.
The research objectives including:
(1) Proposing a method combining physiological sig­
nals to assist the pre-evaluation of the experiential space
design by integrating VR and bio-sensor technologies;
(2) Applying this method in the design stage of
a practical architectural project to verify its applicabil­
ity of assisting the pre-evaluation and perception-
based analysis of spaces;
This paper is structured as follows: Section 2 reviews
existing literature and related works on using VR and
bio-sensor technologies in the architecture spaces
design. Section 3 presents the framework of the evalua­
tion method combining with an empirical case, which
includes the experimental design and its sub-
components. Section 4 details the statistical analysis
applied to our physiological signals and questionnaire
data and the implications on the pre-evaluation of
design using affective physiological signals. Finally, the
conclusion and future directions of this work are
described briefly in section 5.
2. Materials and Methods
The pre-evaluation method proposed in this
research adopted the VR technology, eye-tracking
signal acquisition and peripheral physiological sig­
nals to get human vision interest and arousal
dimension of emotions when roaming in the pre-
simulated VR environment. In this study, we chose
physiological sensing (PPG and EDA) to detect the
emotional arousal of the participants because the
participants need to roam around the virtual envir­
onment using the VR controllers and the physiolo­
gical sensing is more ease-of-use during exercise
and other physical activities. Although more com­
prehensive emotional information could be
obtained by means of EEG, the participants cannot
move their limbs freely and need to minimize the
 JOURNAL OF ASIAN ARCHITECTURE AND BUILDING ENGINEERING
Figure 3. The evaluation workflow.
number of blinks in order to reduce the interference
of Electromyography (EMG) and Electrooculogram
(EOG) signals with EEG. In this experiment, the par­
ticipant’s head could not remain stationary and
needed to look around during the roaming process,
which made it difficult to meet the conditions for
collecting effective EEG signals.
By collecting the physiological data and analysis
combining with the experiential design intention, this
assists method could provide the suggestion for
assisting architects and decision-makers improve the
design of the spaces. This part includes four sections
to introduce the research method and experiment
design. The first part proposes the construction of
a pre-evaluation workflow. The second section is
about the background information of the empirical
case. The third section introduces the process of
visualizing the tested space of the practical case.
Figure 4. The axis space of SISD (design by Ateliers 234).
5
After finishing the construction of experimental
spaces, the fourth part analyzed the method of
extracting spatial elements and generated the com­
parison schemes. The design and details of the experi­
ment are also introduced in the fourth part.
2.1. The pre-evaluation workflow
The pre-evaluation workflow mainly includes four
stages (Figure 3). This workflow constructed rely on
the application of technologies mentioned before.
The workflow construction was detailed introduced
in the writers’ conference paper (Pei, Guo, and Lo
2021a). The workflow of evaluation mainly including
four parts:
1. The researcher created the immersive spaces of
design scheme through the use of virtual space based
on VR.
6 W. PEI ET AL.
2. The researchers extracted design factors from
the design scheme and modified the design art to
construct several different scenarios through
l variables.
3. The researchers obtained eye-tracking and sig­
nal data peripheral physiological from subjects in the
simulation space through VR eye-trackers and
sensors.
4. The researchers analyzed physiological data to
explore the human feeling of the spatial design envir­
onment and provide suggestions combined with
design objectives.
2.2. The empirical case
To apply this pre-evaluation method to assist experi­
ential space design and analysis the feasibility of this
method. In this study, we chose an axis campus space
design of Harbin Institute of Technology Shenzhen
International School of Design (SISD) (Figure 4) as the
sample to finish an empirical case study.
This experiential space scheme was in the stage of
design optimization. Hence, it would be possible for us
to construct a VR environment with efficient spatial
details. SISD space has an essential campus location that
connects the entrances and the main building. During the
design optimization process, the university decision-
makers, design units, construction units, and experts
launched several rounds of discussion on the functional
layout, public space, energy-saving issues, landscape
design, facade design, etc. However, due to the significant
differences in the aesthetic preferences, professional
knowledge and concerns of the interest representatives
of different parties, they had some other points of view
Figure 5. Construct VR scenario in unity3D.
about some spatial design objectives. At the same time,
the architects did not get enough feedback from users to
solve these design disputes.
2.3. The generation of the virtual environment
We firstly constructed SketchUp manual models and
used Unity3D software to build the VR environment
(Figure 5). The data analysis tool, Tobii Pro VR Analytics,
can collect and playback eye movement data in a Unity
3D environment. Hence, Unity3D meets the compat­
ibility requirements of perceptual detection. At the
same time, Unity3D provides a VR environment that
can be experienced by wearing a head-mounted dis­
play. Quantitative data (including eye movement, skin
electricity, electrocardiogram, etc.) of humans are col­
lected by wearing physiological instruments in real-
time for perception analysis and evaluation.
2.4. Spatial elements and comparison schemes
2.4.1. Spatial elements
The spatial components are the mainly stimulus for the
users roaming in the spaces. To investigate and test the
user’s perception feedback on the space design, the
space components should be classified according to the
exist criteria proposed. In 1959, Edward Hall summed up
three types of space with different formal characteristics:
fixed space, semi-fixed characteristic space and informal
space (Zimmerman and Kitsantas 2005). Based on Hall’s
theoretical point of view, Amos Rapport summarized the
elements of the architecture in 1982 and further divided
the space into three categories: fixed features, semi-fixed
 JOURNAL OF ASIAN ARCHITECTURE AND BUILDING ENGINEERING
Figure 6. Dividing spaces’ elements into three categories.
features and non-fixed features (Figure 6) (Rapoport
1990). Each element forms the final architectural space
based on a certain combination.
Hence, basically all kinds of architectural spaces com­
ponents could be divided into three categories. Firstly,
the fixed-feature elements (Rapoport 1990) refer to the
standard components like walls, ceilings, and floors
fixed or changed slowly. In most cases, they are supple­
mented by other elements to convey the meaning of
spaces. Secondly, semifixed-feature elements are the
arrangement and type of furniture, plants, facility and
other elements that change pretty quickly and easily.
Semifixed-feature elements are essential in current
research on spatial meaning. Thirdly, nonfixed-feature
elements are related to the human behaviours in the
spaces, including their body positions and postures,
hand and arm gestures, facial expressions, eye contact.
Since the pre-evaluation method proposed by this
research is developed for the design optimization
stage for the practical projects (after completing the
design and before conducting the construction).
Hence, the fixed-feature elements like the plane layout
and section form have been determined in the early
Figure 7. The recording of the controversial elements during (a) the discussion sessions and (b) the site survey.
7
stages of design formation. The nonfixed-feature ele­
ments are related to the using patterns of users when
they use the physical space which are usually be con­
sidered and observed after finishing construction.
Therefore, the main object of discussion is the semi­
fixed-feature elements.
To identify the semifixed-feature elements that need
to be evaluated in the design of SISD campus space. We
reviewed the recordings of the discussion sessions
(Figure 7) attended by decision makers from various
parties. Through reviewing the sessions’ recording, we
concluded the most mentioned and controversial semi­
fixed-feature elements during the process of design
optimization (Table 1). The university decision-makers
(party A) proposed these spatial elements and design
issues, which could not be answered by designers (party
B) with absolute certainty. We will focus on testing these
spatial factors by designing contrast schemes.
2.4.2. Comparison schemes
According to the design scheme from Ateliers 234
architecture office, this SISD axis campus space mainly
composed of three parts: the entrance space, the
8 W. PEI ET AL.
Table 1. The point at issues of the controversial semifixed-
feature elements of SISD design.
Semi-fixed featuresThe point at issues (whether or not)
Entrance School gate stone The gated stone can reflect the
Space culture of the school
The position of the school gate stone
makes it attractive
Square Several rows of palm Palm trees can increase the square’s
Space trees cultural atmosphere
Impacts the visibility of the square/
blocks the building facade
Is visually appealing
Stone engraved with Is visually appealing
school name
Axis Building elevation The entrance on the facade is visually
space attractive
Corridor bridge The axis space has the depth of field
Increase attention of the main
building
Generate emotional arousal in the
axis space
Feel campus culture and arouse
emotions during roaming
Have an occlusion on the line of sight
Landscape belt Is visually appealing
Lounge seats are easy to find
Signage system Is visually appealing
square space and the axis space. The program
designers defined these three spatial nodes with the
themes: “Origin”, “Development” and “Transcendence”
to show the development of the university over the
past century. Therefore, starting from the entrance of
the campus, the designers designed a series of spatial
nodes along the walking sequence and wish to let the
users have a gradually emotional arousal during the
process of roaming and eventually reach the core area
of the campus (the main building). Each of the three
spatial nodes (entrance, square, axis) on the path had
many spatial design elements. To point out the
Figure 8. Dividing spaces’ elements into three categories.
elements most worthy evaluation and form compari­
son schemes, this research analyzed the controversial
elements and the elements designed to have
a significant impact on human feeling by the architect
for the spatial nodes. Finally, we identified three ele­
ments: “school gate stone”, “palm trees group”, and
“Corridor bridge” in each spatial node as the variable
elements.
To fully understand people’s physiological feedback
to various spatial elements on the roaming path, this
experiment set two kinds of comparison (Figure 8): one
was the “horizontal comparison”, the other was “verti­
cal comparison” (Pei, Guo, and Lo 2021b). The “hori­
zontal comparison” is applied to evaluate the influence
on users’ perception caused by the three most essen­
tial elements when they experience the three spatial
nodes separately. Meanwhile, the “vertical compari­
son” is designed to test the users’ visual attention to
the other spatial elements appeared during the roam­
ing process as well as the change of emotional arousal
level during roaming process. Combining the horizon­
tal and vertical comparison, we could collect the feed­
back data required for the design scheme evaluation.
At the same time, the users only need to roam two
times in the experimental group and control group
virtual environments separately.
The horizontal comparison including “experimental
group” and “control group”. Along the “experimental
group” path, the three essential elements were set and
appeared gradually with the roaming process. On the
contrary, along the “control group” path, these three
elements were removed. Comparing spatial nodes
along the path removes these elements. Through ana­
lyzing the two groups’ perception results, we can know
 JOURNAL OF ASIAN ARCHITECTURE AND BUILDING ENGINEERING
the influence of these spatial elements on the user’s
and whether the design of these elements can truly
reflect the design objectives of architect. The “vertical
comparison” including the contrast of users’ percep­
tion change when roaming different spatial nodes and
their visual perception of the other spatial elements
including gate stone, palm trees, building elevation
landscape belt corridor bridge and signage system
etc. along the path.
2.4.3. Participants
To eliminate or reduce the errors caused by differences
between subjects, this experiment was a within-
subjects (within-groups) design test. Each participant
has to conduct experiments with all conditions. In this
study, through the distribution of recruitment informa­
tion on social platforms and online platforms, a total of
30 participants (16 female, 14 male) were eventually
recruited, ranging in age from 18 to 40 (7 was 18–
25 years old, 18 was 26–30 years old, and five was
31–40 years old). Of the 30 participants, 10 people
had VR devices at home or workplaces and used
them regularly. 12 people said they had limited experi­
ence using VR before, and 8 people had never used it.
Besides, the subject pool included people from differ­
ent educational and occupational backgrounds. In this
study, the 30 subjects had different occupational back­
grounds, including students, financial workers, sales­
people, technical engineers, translators, and product
developers. Only two of them worked in architectural
design-related jobs, so the spatial perception bias
would be mitigated. The experiment’s participants’
conditions were normal vision and no diseases such
as heart disease or vertigo. Participants did not join in
the design process of this project or experience this
Figure 9. The interface of the ErgoLAB platform.
9
space sample before the experiment. They were told
all the possible risks of the investigation before the
experiment and agreed to participate in this research
study.
To eliminate accumulative error caused by experi­
ment order from one condition to another, 15 subjects
will first roam the control group and then the experi­
mental group; the other 15 participants will wander in
reverse order. Because this will be an open campus
space that welcomes the public, the subjects’ educa­
tional background and occupation are not restricted in
this experiment.
2.4.4. Experimental equipment and environment
This research used the ErgoLAB man-machine synchro­
nization platform (“ErgoLAB 3.0” King far International
Inc.) (Figure 9). This platform has the function of real-
time synchronous acquisition, processing and analysis
of multimodal human-machine-environment data.
Since 2013, the platform has been used as an academic
scientific research tool in relevant research units or
institutes. The test sample groups (subjects) cover
a wide range of research fields such as built environ­
ment, safety engineering, user experience, military
defense, traffic and driving behavior, industrial innova­
tion design, sports, psychology, etc. The search terms
of the outcomes using this platform is “ErgoLAB &
kingfar”
In this study, ErgoLAB 3.0 was used to synchronize
the HTC Vive Pro VR eye-tracking system (recording
frequencies: 120 Hz, Resolution: 1440 × 1600 pixels
per eye, the trackable field of view: 110°) in real time
with an eye movement sampling frequency of 120 Hz.
The velocity-threshold (I–VT) algorithm was used to
extract gaze points and further analyze eye movement
10 W. PEI ET AL.

vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
indexes such as gaze count, gaze duration, pupil dia­ u N
uX
meter, eye beat, and blink count. Meanwhile, the eye SDNN ¼ t ðRRi RR Þ (1)
movement data are synchronized in real time with the i¼1

ErgoLAB wearable wireless physiological recording sys­

tem. Among them, the skin resistance sensor (EDA) sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
and ear tip pulse sensor (PPG-HR/HRV) were sampled 1 X n

at 64 Hz (EDA sampling accuracy 0.01 μs; HR sampling RMSSD ¼ ðRRiþ1 RRi Þ2 (2)
N 1 i¼1
accuracy 1 bpm) to further analyze heart rate (HR) and
heart rate variability (HRV) in the time domain (stan­
For the data analysis, the ErgoLAB includes signal pro­
dard deviation of RR intervals-SDNN and root mean
cessing modules, which can preprocess data, and
square difference of adjacent RR interval sequences-
select data fragments to filter and extract meaningful
RMSSD) with frequency domain indicators (energy
data results. The data of preprocessed physiological
ratio LF/HF) and physiological indicators such as skin
signals collected by wearable sensors can be exported
conductance (SC), some of which were calculated as
for statistical analysis after being processed.
follows (1) (2):

Figure 10. Experimental design process.

Figure 11. Wearable physical sensors were used in this experiment.

 JOURNAL OF ASIAN ARCHITECTURE AND BUILDING ENGINEERING
The experiment was carried out in the laboratory
of Beijing Jinfa Technology Co., Ltd. The laboratory
is an independent room that includes the experi­
ment area and the analysis area to reduce the
environmental interference in the experiment.
Through strictly controls experimental variables,
this research minimized the real environmental
influence on the participates’ sense of presence
when experience VR. The researchers synchronously
monitored the data collected and conveyed experi­
mental instructions in real-time.
2.4.5. Experimental process
The formal experimental process (Figure 10) design
mainly includes the following five stages:
1. The preparation stage: explaining experiments
and the method to wear physical sensors. Subjects
first understand the experiment content, the path of
roaming and wear the related equipment (Figure 11)
and VR eye movement device. The eye movement
equipment needed calibration, after which the sub­
jects calmed down for about 5 minutes until ready to
start the experiment.
2. The first stage of the experiment: the subjects
completed the roaming in the experimental space.
The subjects wore Tobii Pro VR eye tracker and wan­
dered along the path of the tested spatial sequence.
Their physiological devices recorded was collected by
the ErgoLAB platform, and the first stage lasted about
5 minutes.
3. Rest: Let participants rest for about 10 minutes.
The researcher switched the VR scene (remove the
space elements) and checked whether the collected
physiological and eye movement data were complete,
regular and exportable.
Figure 12. Wearable physical sensors were used in this experiment (Braithwaite et al. 2013).
11
4. The second stage of the experiment: the subjects
completed the roaming in the other space. The subjects
wore Tobii Pro VR eye tracker and wandered along the
path of the tested spatial sequence. Their physiological
devices recorded was collected by the ErgoLAB plat­
form, and the second stage lasted about 5 minutes.
5. Finish subjective questionnaire: help the subjects
remove the devices they wore and let them take
a short rest to complete the subjective questionnaire
survey, which was used to verify and analyze the phy­
siological signals and collect the subjects’ suggestions
on the spatial schemes. This process took about 10 min­
utes. At the same time, the researcher sorted out the
stored data and prepared the next subject for the
experiment.
3. Result
The data analysis in this study is based on objective
data collection and a subjective questionnaire survey.
The physiological signal includes the physiological
indicators and eye-tracking data. This research used
the data analysis modules of the ErgoLAB platform to
do the data analysis. This study used ErgoLAB EDA
analysis software which has the function of smoothing
data to automatically extract the Skin conductance
(SC) data (μs) varied with time. Besides, we used
ErgoLAB PPG analysis software
3.1. Objective data
3.1.1. Emotion model and physiological signals
Although human emotions are complex, several stan­
dard models are used in psychological research to
define and measure emotions. There are two types of
12 W. PEI ET AL.
models for emotions measurement: one is the discrete
emotion model; the other is the dimensional emotions
model. Compared with the discrete emotion model,
the dimensional emotion model is more suitable for
emotion recognition based on physiological signals,
which does not need to judge the emotion type pre­
cisely. The Circumplex Model (Figure 12) is a widely
used dimensional emotion model (Russell 1980) that
has two such dimensions: Valence and Arousal, and
can quantitatively describe emotion. The valence
(X-axis) is used to describe the degree of liking, from
liking (positive) to disliking (negative); Emotional arou­
sal (Y-axis) is used to describe the degree of arousal
from low arousal (low arousal) to high arousal (high
arousal). Since 1980, the emotion mode tool has begun
to be applied in environmental psychology research
and was widely accepted in architectural studies
(Plutchik 1980).
The key to measure emotion based on physiological
response patterns is collecting reliable physiological
signals. In this study, EDA and PPG, the two most
commonly used and stable physiological indicators in
physiological and emotional analysis, are selected to
conduct physiological sensing detection and emotion
recognition for users who have roaming experiences in
architectural space.
Electrodermal activity (EDA) describes autonomic
changes in the skin’s electrical properties which is
decomposed into Skin Conductance Level (SCL) and
Skin Conductance Responses (SCRs) (Park 2009). The
most widely studied property of EDA is the
Skin Conductance (SC). Skin Conductance (SC) is
the time-domain indicator that has been suggested
by preliminary evidence which is an important index
of respondents’ arousal levels. Since there is a positive
linear correlation between SC and arousal level, it is
Figure 13. Set the spatial elements as an AOI.
often used to study psychological and emotional
states (Porges 1995). The SC has been shown to be
higher during activated states, such as states of high
emotional arousal level. The SCRs is the phasic data of
SC which represents the fast-changing signal res pond­
ing to a stimulus. SCRs usually last for a few seconds
and is caused by a particular stimulus or event. The SCL
is the tonic data of SC which stands for continuous,
slowly-changing Skin Conductance Level that could
last for at least 30s (Braithwaite et al. 2013). The SCL
refers to respondents’ long-term reaction to stimuli
and general changes in autonomic arousal which is
used in this research to indicate moment-to-moment
(roaming process in the built space) arousal level
change.
PPG is mainly used to measure the user’s heart rate
variability (HRV), which can give objective indicators of
sympathetic (SNS) and parasympathetic nerve activity
(PNS) balance in the autonomic nervous system
(Electrophysiology 1996). Descriptive values (mean ±
sd) of HRV in time, including i) the mean of Heart Rate
(Mean HR); ii) standard deviation regular RR interval
(SDNN) and iii) root mean square of successive differ­
ences squared (RMSSD). In the frequency domain vari­
ables, the following was considered of the spectral
components: i) very low-frequency component (VLF);
ii) low-frequency component (LF); iii) high-frequency
component (HF), and iv) LF/HF ratio.
The most commonly used time-domain measures for
short-term recordings are RMSSD and SDNN. RMSSD
metric is thought to primarily represent the indicator
of beat-to-beat variations related to PNS (Kreibig 2010);
SDNN indicates overall variability. Subjects who had
high SDNN exhibited greater activation of other auto­
nomic nervous (including PNS and SNS). Frequency-
domain main variables: LF/HF ratio reveals the balance
 JOURNAL OF ASIAN ARCHITECTURE AND BUILDING ENGINEERING 13

between SNS and PNS. Heart rate is slowed due to
increased PNS activity when people have a rest. When
people have an emotional episode, the PNS and SNS
influence would be reduced and increased, respectively,
increasing heart rate. The PNS activity can be measured
as the RMSSD, while SNS activity can be indicated by
heart rate (Daniel and Kamioka 2017). The higher the
emotional arousal (positive or negative), the higher the
Mean HR and the lower the RMSSD.
3.1.2. Area of interest and eye movement indicators
To analyze the visual attention of spatial elements that
occurred along this roaming path, Area of Interest
(AOI) tools should be used to select regions of
a displayed element in advance (Figure 13) so that
the area by which metrics are calculated. For analysis,
AOI Fixation Count (N) and AOI Fixation Duration (s)
were selected as the eye-movement index. These two
indexes can reflect users’ attention to spatial scene
factors. (i) AOI Fixation Count represents how the sub­
ject processes and distributes attention to the spatial
elements. The more Fixation times, the more inter­
ested the subjects are in the area of interest. (ii) AOI
Fixation Duration denotes the duration of fixation
when the subject’s viewpoint stays in the AOI. The
longer the AOI Fixation Duration, the longer the sub­
ject spent fixing the AOI during the roaming, which
means the subjects may be more interested in these
elements. Besides, (iii) Pupil diameter has been proved
to be a reliable physiological feature that can reflect
subjects’ emotional state and degree of focus. Pupil
dilation is determined by emotional arousal, indepen­
dent of whether visual stimulations are pleasant or
unpleasant. (iv) The more blink counts the user has,
to some extent, the more nervous or anxious the user
is; The average absolute distance reflects the degree of
openness and narrowness of space.
3.1.3. Experimental result
As mentioned above, this experiment adopted
a within-group design. This research used statistical
methods for the experiment data analysis, including

Figure 14. Check outliers of physiological feedback data of the whole roaming path (generated by SPSS). (a) Mean HR difference.
(b) SDNN difference (c) RMSSD difference (d) HF/LF difference (e) SC difference.

Table 2. Physiological feedback data of the whole roaming path.

N MeanHR(bmp) SDNN (ms) RMSSD (ms) LF/HF SC(μs)
Experimental group 30 86.27 ± 9.81 118.58 ± 68.35 150.72 ± 94.46 1.18 ± 0.72 5.13 ± 5.70
Control group 30 86.43 ± 9.66 134.19 ± 99.15 166.43 ± 123.84 1.28 ± 0.95 5.27 ± 5.77
t /Z Z = −.220 t = −.792 Z = −.933 t = −.298 Z = −.526
p .828 .428 .358 .765 .603

Figure 15. Physiological indexes mean value of 30 subjects of whole roaming path.
14 W. PEI ET AL.
paired-sample t-test and Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test.
Meanwhile, before data analysis, the descriptive sta­
tistic function of SPSS (version 20.0.0) software was
used to check the outliers of collected data. The
value of more than 3 standard deviations above or
below the mean can be regarded as extreme values.
When the extreme value has information, the nor­
mal processing method uses the edge value corre­
sponding to the upper and lower limits instead. We
extracted the physiological, eye movement and sub­
jective questionnaires data through horizontal and
vertical comparison analysis, which has significant
differences (P < 0.05). We finally obtained feedback
on spatial design and factors using multivariate data
to conduct integrated statistics and mutual verifica­
tion. All Statistical calculations are performed in
SPSS.
3.1.3.1. Horizontal comparison. The horizontal
comparison mainly includes the comparison of the
paired comparison of “entrance”, “square”, and “axis”
three spaces and some comparison according to
design intent. Firstly, we used SPSS to check data out­
liers (Figure 14). After processing extreme value data,
we conducted Normality tests in the statistical
Table 3. Statistics of the eye movement feedback data of the
whole path.
Pupil Absolute
N diameter(mm) distance(px)
Experimental 30 3.12 ± 0.52 117.69 ± 24.40
group
Control group 30 3.09 ± 0.45 120.53 ± 23.60
t/Z Z = −.097 t = −.953
p .922 .349
Figure 16. Eye-tracking data mean value of 30 subjects of whole roaming path.
software “SPSS”. Paired sample t-test can be used
when our data follow a normal distribution; otherwise,
the Wilcoxon Sign-Rank test should be used to analyze
whether the difference of each physiological index
between two sample means is “statistically significant”.
In addition, we analyzed the mean value physiological
signals of the 30 subjects were to obtain the central
tendency of their physiological feedback.
1. Comparison of whole roaming path
According to the physiological data statistical ana­
lysis of the whole path (Table 2), we found that the
subjects’ physiological data have no significant differ­
ence when roaming the experimental path and control
path (p > 0.05). The average level of 30 subjects’ phy­
siological indexes shows that (Figure 15) the subjects’
autonomic nervous is more active when roaming the
control path, in the process of path roaming. These 30
subjects may have higher emotional arousal level
when roaming in the “control group” path. However,
there was no statistical significance of users’ percep­
tion when roaming in the “control group” and “experi­
ment group” paths which means the presence or
absence of these three spatial elements would not
have a statistically significant effect on the participants’
emotional arousal level during the process of roaming
the whole path.
Besides, we analyzed the user’s eye movements
data, including Pupil Diameter (mm), Absolute
Distance (Px) and Blink Count (N/s). From the statistical
Blink count analysis result (Table 3), there was still no significant
(N/s) difference when subjects were roaming in two differ­
0.25 ± 0.25
ent paths (p > 0.05). The average analysis of the 30
0.23 ± 0.22 subjects’ eye movement indexes (Figure 16) showed
Z = −.915 that their average Absolute distance was larger when
.360
they were roaming the control group path. Daniel and
 JOURNAL OF ASIAN ARCHITECTURE AND BUILDING ENGINEERING 15

Table 4. Statistics of the physiological feedback data of three space nodes.

N Mean HR (bmp) SDNN (ms) RMSSD (ms) LF/HF SC(μs)
Experimental group Entrance space 30 85.07 ± 10.44 119.43 ± 137.91 157.05 ± 196.24 2.28 ± 2.21 5.74 ± 5.67
Control group 30 84.73 ± 9.58 119.18 ± 105.61 163.93 ± 190.23 1.84 ± 1.61 5.61 ± 5.67
t/Z Z = −.321 Z = −.381 Z = −.463 Z = −1.327 t = .392
p .748 .704 .644 .185 .698
Experimental group Square space 30 85.83 ± 10.49 138.10 ± 124.39 178.45 ± 175.74 1.31 ± 2.21 5.15 ± 5.60
Control group 30 86.03 ± 10.83 122.23 ± 116.26 149.99 ± 141.22 1.60 ± 1.41 5.27 ± 5.73
t/Z Z = −.127 t = .603 t = .817 t = −1.144 Z = .668
p .899 .552 .421 .262 .504
Experimental group Axis space 30 85.83 ± 10.49 138.10 ± 124.39 178.45 ± 175.74 1.31 ± 2.21 5.15 ± 5.60
Control group 30 86.03 ± 10.83 122.23 ± 116.26 149.99 ± 141.22 1.60 ± 1.41 5.27 ± 5.73
t/Z t = −.505 t = .469 t = .328 Z = −1.656 t = −.672
p .618 .642 .746 .0980* .507
(Significance:*p < 0.1, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.01)3. Vision situation of the main building

Figure 17. Heat map of fixation count of the main building (schematic diagram). (a) Fixation count of the main building
(experiential group); (b) Fixation count of the main building (control group).

Kamioka (2017) compared their research and showed

saccade distance was larger under complex content
Table 5. Statistics of the physiological feedback data of three conditions [80]. The analysis result showed that there
space nodes. is more spatial information in the control path.
AOI Fixation count AOI Fixation duration In the horizontal comparison, after statistical data
N (N) (s)
Experimental 30 86.77 ± 69.73 .16 ± .038
processing, no significant differences were found in
group physiological indicators. To some extent, these three
Control group 30 73.13 ± 59.34 .16 ± .052 spatial factors have no significant effect on users’ emo­
t/Z t = 1.729 Z = −.257
p .094* .797 tional experience and visual perception when roaming
(Significance:*p < 0.1, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.01) on the whole path.
2. Horizontal comparison of three space nodes

Table 6. Vertical comparison of physiological feedback data in the three spaces.

MeanHR (bmp) SDNN (ms) RMSSD (ms) LF/HF SC(μs)
Entrance(A) 85.07 ± 10.45 119.43 ± 137.91 157.05 ± 196.24 2.28 ± 2.21 5.74 ± 5.67
Square(B) 85.83 ± 10.49 138.10 ± 124.39 178.45 ± 175.74 1.31 ± .96 5.15 ± 5.60
Axis(C) 87.00 ± 9.84 125.36 ± 107.56 149.91 ± 141.33 1.31 ± .89 4.88 ± 5.79
Compared as a whole: one-way repeated measures ANOVA
F (2,58) 6.158 .597 .695 4.621 5.73
p .04** .554 .503 .014** .000***
Pairwise comparison between spatial nodes: paired-sample t-test
A pk B t −1.432 −1.100 −.912 2.411 4.907
p .163 .280 .369 .022** .000**
B pk C t −2.268 .804 1.418 −.035 2.047
p .031** .428 .167 .973 .050*
A pk C t −3.169 −.306 .232 2.237 4.172
p .004*** .762 .819 .033** .000**
(Significance:*p < 0.1, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.01)
16 W. PEI ET AL.

We replayed the experimental videos of the sub­ The experimental group has the axis space with the
jects and marked three time periods on the whole horizontal corridors. The scenery created by corridors
roaming path according to the participant’s position will make users unable to see the full view of the main
in the 3D virtual space. Then, the data were derived in building when they just enter the axis space and gra­
sections to obtain the physiological perception data of dually see the whole facade of the main building mov­
the participants in these three spatial nodes. The data ing. It can be seen from the analysis results of eye
of these three spatial nodes in the experimental group movement data that the attention of the subjects to
and control group were compared, respectively. the main building can be enhanced to a certain extent.
According to the results of statistical analysis (Table 4), However, the difference of existing visual attention is
there was no significant difference in emotional arousal not significant enough. Designers can further
among all the subjects when experiencing different space strengthen this effect by optimizing the horizontal
nodes (p < 0.05). This means that the design of three corridor’s design or adjusting the corridors’ location.
essential elements in each spatial node did not cause
different emotional arousal level. Partly explains, the exist­
3.1.3.2. Vertical comparison. In the vertical compar­
ing essential design elements did not have a substantial
ison, the physiological and emotional feedback of
impact on constructing experiential space. For example,
users when roaming “entrance”, “square”, and “axis”
the designer wants to use a large school stones gate to
three spaces in turns will be analyzed. One-way
form an atmosphere of the entrance space and impress
repeated-measures ANOVA was used. In addition, the
the users. However, through the experiment, we found
spatial elements seen in sequence along the path are
that this design did not have a significant effect on users’
set as AOI areas to explore the visual feedback.
emotional arousal. Therefore, the form of the school gate
still needs to be further optimized to enhance the effect Table 7. Analysis of eye movement data of three spatial nodes
on users’ perception. in longitudinal comparison.
In the axis space design, one of the designs aims to Pupil Absolute Blink count(N/
use the horizontal corridor to enhance the depth of diameter(mm) distance(px) s)
Entrance 3.12 ± .52 115.68 ± 25.96 .25 ± .27
space and users’ attention to the facade of the main (A)
building, located at the end of the axis. Therefore, in Square 3.95 ± .71 115.58 ± 24.35 .24 ± .27
(B)
the horizontal comparison, we also set the main build­ Axis (C) 3.12 ± .51 118.19 ± 25.49 .26 ± .24
ing as an AOI area and collected the subjects’ eye
Compared as a whole: one-way repeated measures ANOVA
movement data on the main building when roaming
F (2, 58) 126.01 .758 .453
in the “axis space” with and without corridors p .000*** .473 .654
(Figure 17). According to the statistical analysis result
Pairwise comparison between spatial nodes: paired-sample t-test
(Table 5), the axis space with and without horizontal A pk B t −11.861 .039 .453
corridors had approached close to a significant impact p .000*** .969 .654
on the users’ Fixation Count on the facade of the main B pk C t 11.563 −1.065 −1.037
p .000*** .295 .308
building (p = 0.094 < 0.1). There was no difference in A pk C t .156 −1.110 −.279
fixation duration, and the average happens to be the p .877 .276 .783
same. (Significance:*p < 0.1, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.01)

Figure 18. Vertical comparison of mean trend statistics of three spatial physiological signals.
 JOURNAL OF ASIAN ARCHITECTURE AND BUILDING ENGINEERING
Figure 19. The visual attention of spatial elements in the test path.
1. Physiological signals of three spaces nodes
According to the statistical analysis (Table 6), there
were significant differences in some physiological
indexes of the subjects during precepting the three
spaces. For example, when the three spaces were
compared as a whole, it was found that the Mean HR,
LF/HF and SC indexes of users were significantly differ­
ent (p < 0.05). Hence, the emotional arousal states of
users in these three spatial scenes are other.
To further analyze the differences of emotional
arousal in the space, we conducted paired sample
t-test for every two spatial nodes. It can be seen from
the results that:(i) Mean HR and SC indexes of users in
the “square” and “axis” space are significantly different;
(ii) There are significant differences in the p values of
LF/HF and SC indicators of users in the process of
roaming in the “entrance” and “square” space respec­
tively; (iii) Significant differences were found in the
mean HR, LF/HF and SC of users during their roaming
in the “entrance” and “axis” space.
According to the vertical comparison (Figure 18), in
general, the emotional arousal degree of the subjects
in the three spatial nodes is as follows: entrance
>square >axis. The users in the roaming process of
“axis” did not have high emotional arousal. However,
“entrance” is also the starting point of roaming. The
roaming perception experiment has just started, which
will cause some users to be relatively nervous (8
17
people in this experiment have never been exposed
to VR environment at all), which may be one of the
reasons for the high average emotional arousal of the
participants in the entrance space.
2. Eye movement situation of three spaces nodes
We found that only average Pupil diameter were
significant differences (Table 7). When subjects roam­
ing in the square space (B), their average pupil dia­
meter was larger. According to the previous studies,
the pupil diameter larger means the space may be
more attractive. The subjects were likely to be happier
when roaming the square space. To verify the result,
this study also used the subjective questionnaire to
assist.
Another essential comparison is to analyze the
visual attention of spatial elements in this testing
path in the vertical comparison. According to the eye-
movement data analysis result of the subjects in each
AOI below (Figure 19), it can be concluded that, during
the roaming process, the 30 participants:
● Had the most frequent fixation count on the
facade of the main building (N = 79.95). This
indicates that the main building has
a substantial degree of attention.
● Had a more frequent fixation count (N = 49.92).
Even though the participants had been informed
of the roaming path in advance, they still spent a
18 W. PEI ET AL.
Figure 20. Subjective survey results of the entrance space.
long time reading the guide system and bulletin
board (Mean value = 0.24s), which indicated that
their design was relatively distinct and easy to
attract users.
● Had less attention to the entrance of the build­
ing. According to the recordings experiment,
most of the subjects did not notice the
entrances. The fixation count and duration were
few and very short. On the one hand, the design
of the entrance was not clear enough; on the
other hand, the subjects were told that they
could not enter the building to ignore the
entrance.
● Had the most prolonged attention to the stone
carving on the ground, on which the designer
has carved famous quotes to reflect the cultural
nature of the campus. Since it was on the floor,
many of the subjects ignored them while roam­
ing. But the participants would stop and read the
stone inscriptions word by word once they saw
them. This shows that this design element has
Figure 21. Subjective survey results of the square space.
a specific role in cultural metaphor, but its
appearance needs to be designed more eye-
catching.
3.2. Subjective questionnaire data
After completing the physiological sensing test, this
study used the subjective questionnaire to verify the
objective physiological detection results. The subjec­
tive questionnaire mainly consists of two parts: The
first part is the primary information survey of the
subjects, including their age, gender, education
level, occupation, VR experience, etc. The second
part is about their spatial perception and feeling
after completing the roaming. The questionnaire
design mainly adopts the Semantic Differential
Technique. Subjective survey for each space specifi­
cally includes two main contents. The first is to give
a semantic rating on spatial elements and obtain the
user’s preference. The second is to score the
 JOURNAL OF ASIAN ARCHITECTURE AND BUILDING ENGINEERING
Figure 22. Subjective survey results of the axis space.
semantic meaning of the emotion scale for the emo­
tional experience. This part is to get the information
of emotional valence (positive/negative).
1. Entrance space
As the semantic differential chart shows (Figure 20),
on the whole, the emotions of the 30 subjects in this
space are positive. Most of the subjects feel relaxed
and happy with positive arousal. However, the partici­
pants generally did not feel the apparent emotional
fluctuation or surprise in the entrance space. Besides,
the scale of the entrance space gives people the
impression of being relatively open and uncrowded.
However, it should be noted that the subjects gener­
ally believe that the school gate stone was not very
eye-catching, which is consistent with the eye move­
ment analysis results. The school gate stones’ AOI had
fewer fixation counts overall.
2. Square space
The square is a transition space for users from the
entrance space to the axis space. According to the
chart (Figure 21), (i) on the whole, the square spatial
scale is big to users, but most of the users did not
find apparent geographical features through design;
(ii) palm trees give users a positive feeling on the
whole without delivery the ritual sense of the uni­
versity that different from the designer expectation
and needs to be improved. (iii) The facade design of
the building, the skin of the building, will not pro­
duce a too dense visual impression. As for the emo­
tional survey, users thought their emotional state
was relatively happy and relaxed. At the same time,
users generally believe that their emotions in the
square space are more stable than in the entrance
space. This is consistent with what the physiological
feedback tells us.
3. Axis space
19
Axis space includes landscape, markers (guide sys­
tem and billboard), rest seats, corridors, building
facade (entrance) and other spatial elements. It can
be found from the subjective questionnaire results
that the users felt more relaxed and pleasant in this
space. Therefore, regarding the degree of emotional
arousal, the subjective questionnaire (Figure 22) and
physiological data results show a similar trend; the
entrance space will make users produce higher emo­
tional arousal. As roaming deepens, users’ emotions
level off.
For spatial elements analysis, the subjective feed­
back was consistent with the results of eye movement
result to some extent. (i) The subjects generally
believed that the content of the guiding system and
the billboard was relatively explicit, with strong visual
attraction and distinct location for easy viewing; (ii) The
scores of the building entrance obviousness were low,
indicating that the users thought that the design of the
building entrance had not attracted their attention; (iii)
the corridors was an essential factor in this space.
Some users thought they blocked the line of sight.
However, they give the space a sense of hierarchy.
Users cannot see the whole of the main building at
a glance. This design enhances the degree of attention
paid to the facade of the main building.
4. Discussion
4.1. The findings of the empirical case experiment
4.1.1. Horizontal comparison
According to the analysis of physiological detection
results and subjective survey, the most critical ele­
ments in these three spatial nodes have little influence
on users’ perception. Compared with the designers’
design concepts, the existing design could not fully
20 W. PEI ET AL.

Table 8. Analysis of eye movement data of three spatial nodes in longitudinal comparison.
Design objectives
Spaces (from scheme) Feedback results
School Have a good viewing angle, good display surface, Less eye-catching; not strong attention
gate have a strong cultural atmosphere. (short gaze duration).
stone

Palm trees The line of sight in the square is transparent and The cultural atmosphere is not strong
group have a good sense of ritual. and cannot give people a sense of
ritual and strong emotional arousal.

Horizontal Use the horizontal connection to enhance the depth Users’ curiosity and attention of the
corridors of axial space; Form spatial sequence; Let users main building was enhanced, but no
produce emotional arousal and a sense of apparent emotional arousal
worship. appeared.

Table 9. Comparison of design objectives and feedback results.

Design objectives
Analytical aspect (from scheme) Feedback results
Space The design of a dynamic axis space enables users After the test, it was found that there was no
sequence to generate rich emotional changes and apparent emotional arousal, and the
convey campus culture. emotional state was relatively calm.

Cultural The design ground carving stone, publicity The publicity column was eye-catching. The
atmosphere column, the name of the school stone show location of the carving stone on the ground
the mountains and valleys culture, the spirit of was not easy to find, but users were willing
the campus-style. to read.

Space The building entrance is eye-catching, the guide The guiding system has good visual appeal,
function system is transparently clear, and the but the building entrance is the opposite.
wayfinding is convenient.

reflect the design objectives (Table 8). Based on this,
this study puts forward the following optimization
suggestions:
1. The design of the school gate stone in the
entrance space needs to be further optimized to
improve the effect of emotional contagion. Basing on
the experience of architects, on the one hand, the
material selection and form design could be used to
improve the cultural nature of the school gate stone.
On the other hand, the combination of school gate
stone and landscape design would be a method to foil
the campus cultural atmosphere of the entrance space.
 JOURNAL OF ASIAN ARCHITECTURE AND BUILDING ENGINEERING
In addition, considering the tension of users when they
first enter the unfamiliar campus environment, the
designers could appropriately design a guiding system
for entrance space and help users quickly understand
the walking path.
2. The design of the palm trees group in the square
did not achieve the architect’s design goals. While
most users felt peace and comfort and did not have
high emotional arousal, reflecting the effect on cam­
pus culture’s emotional contagion was somewhat
insufficient. The architect could combine landscape
design, such as setting statues between the palm
trees to enhance the emotional appeal of the square;
3. The horizontal corridor in axis space is suggested
to be preserved here because the comprehensive
results can better enhance the sense of sequence of
the axis space and improve their attention to the main
building. We infer that this result is that when users
enter the axis space, the horizontal corridor blocks the
view of seeing the main building. The horizontal facade
texture of the buildings on both sides guides users to
walk forward. This design can cause the association
and curiosity of the users to the distant main building.
4.1.2. Vertical comparison
According to the vertical comparison result, there are
significant differences in the emotional changes of
users when exploring three spaces. After analyzing
the impact of space on users’ emotions and architect’s
design intention (Table 9), this study puts forward the
following optimization suggestions:
1. The emotional arousal of users decreases gradu­
ally as they enter the campus. This is different from the
designer’s design goal, which wanted the user to have
emotional change as the sequence unfolds, at least,
the design effect was not significant. Hence, the
designer needs to optimize the space design to
enhance the impact of emotional contagion to better
convey the campus culture atmosphere and spirit.
2. According to the feedback results of eye-
movement data, users do not pay enough attention
to the building entrance. The guides system could be
helpful to solve this problem and help users find the
entrance more easily.
3. At present, the guide system, bulletin boards and
ground stones landscape are used to convey campus
culture. According to the eye-tracking data, the
ground carving stones were important landscape
design. However, through watching the experiment
recording, we found that they were challenging for
users to find in the process of roaming which they
need to walk into and lower the head to see them on
the ground. It is suggested that the design can opti­
mize to form a certain angle with the ground so that
users can read and watch it easily and give full play to
its role in cultural communication.
21
4.2. The findings of pre-evaluation method
application
This study extracted the spatial elements that need to
be evaluated according to the design scheme text, the
designer’s design concept and the viewpoints of all
interested parties during the design optimization pro­
cess. The different spatial elements were used to form
the comparison schemes in next step to test the
emotional and visual perception of users. The percep­
tion results standing for the users’ feedback provided
objective suggestion and made the design optimization
process more effective and scientific. In addition, this
pre-evaluation method is based on the extraction and
test of controversial spatial elements mentioned in the
practical project. Hence, this method is expected could
to be applied to the evaluation of experiential building
spaces with different types and functions such as monu­
mental, commercial, iconic and transportation spaces
which emphasis the user’ experience. At the same
time, the method could help to improve the process
and results of scheme optimization especially when
there are controversial factors or difficult to predict the
spatial design effect by providing more scientific sug­
gestion and feedback for optimization and comparison.
There are still some deficiencies of this research and
result. First of all, collecting physiological signals need
sensing devices and a controlled environment. Hence, it
was difficult to widely collect the users’ perceptions to
analyze combing design objectives. Besides, the physio­
logical signals such as PPG and EDA used in this research
could only reflect arousal dimension but not valence
dimension of emotions. Among them, the valence
dimension is used to describe the degree of (un)plea­
santness, from pleasantness (positive) to unpleasant­
ness (negative); the arousal dimension of emotion is
used to describe the degree of arousal, from low arousal
to high arousal. One of the limitations of this research is
the lack of measuring valence dimension using physio­
logical signals. Through physiological detection results,
this research could only obtain information on the arou­
sal dimension, without able to judge specific types of
emotions. Hence, this research used questionnaires to
verify the physiological detection result and got some
information related to the emotional types. In the fol­
lowing research stage, some other physiological detec­
tion methods such as Electroencephalogram (EEG) and
FER could be used to obtain the user’s emotional type.
The existed research (Horlings, Datcu, and Rothkrantz
2008) proved that the EEG signals contained enough
information on both the valence and arousal dimension.
Besides, developing an algorithm to build a direction
between the psychological and neurophysiological
results is an expected research direction. Meanwhile,
the pre-evaluation method proposed in this research
requires a simulation of the schemes in a VR environ­
ment with high quality.
22 W. PEI ET AL.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, we describe a workflow to pre-evaluate
the design of experiential architecture combined with
VR and physiological detection. Firstly, the architectural
spaces that need to be tested were constructed in the
VR environment, which could quickly add, subtract or
change the spatial elements and create comparison
schemes. Secondly, through physiological sensors and
eye trackers, users’ emotional and visual perception
data were recorded when roaming in the spaces.
Thirdly, the users’ subjective feelings were collected
using questionnaires to verify the objective physiologi­
cal test result. In the end, the users’ perception data
were statistically analyzed to compare the users’ differ­
ent reactions to the spaces and elements. In this way,
this research found that the existing three spatial fea­
tures, which are most controversial in discussions
between school decision-makers and designers, have
little influence on the perception and need to be
improved based on the design objectives. This research
proposed a pre-evaluation workflow which combine
biometric sensors and eye trackers to get both emo­
tional and visual perception feedback of users and could
be used to improve architectural schemes in the design
stage before construction in a more objective and scien­
tific way. In addition, this method is based on dividing
building space elements to construct comparison
schemes for testing which could be applied to the pre-
evaluation of many types of building spaces as well as
their design elements. The research result shows that
this proposed workflow could help architects to real-
time iterate or compare designs and enhance the exist­
ing evaluation process of participatory design in some
respects. On the one hand, physiological data and
detection provided more scientific and objective evi­
dence for scheme optimization. On the other hand,
the evaluation flow did not require users to understand
professional knowledge or imagine 3D space based on
2D drawings. In further work, we expect to aggregate
the perception data and spatial elements using big data
information interaction technologies to provide direct
guidance for experiential architect design. This evalua­
tion method is expected to provide evidence-based
recommendations to designers and make the architec­
tural design process more humane and scientific.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the “King far Research Support Program” of King
far International Inc. for supporting this study and providing
the necessary equipment.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
This work is partially supported by The National Social
Science Fund Later Stage Funding Project. Grant no:
19FXWB026; the Guangdong Science and Technology
Project, Grant no: The Guangdong Science and Technology
Project 2017A020220011; The Higher Education Teaching
Research and Reform Project of Guangdong Province, Grant
no: HITSZERP19001, Virtual simulation experiment teaching
project of Harbin Institute of Technology, Grant no:
AY11000014.
Notes on contributors
Wanyu PEI was an architecture master student who gradu­
ated from Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen).
Currently, she is a PhD student in the Department of
Architecture, College of Design and Engineering, National
University of Singapore. Her main research areas are archi­
tectural evaluation and design in VR Environments; human
environmental perception; VR+architectural education,
urban information modeling, 3D urban information map­
ping, circular urban design.
Guo Xiangmin is currently an associate professor at HITsz, a
member of the Foreign Urban Planning Committee of the
Urban Planning Society of China, a member of the editorial
board of authoritative international SCI, and A&HCI journals,
and an expert in rewriting international SCI journals. His main
research interests include urban and architectural design
methods supported by virtual digital technology, decision-
making evaluation of urban and rural development, urban
operations, and strategic planning. He has presided over and
participated in a number of national funds and projects.
Tiantian Lo is an Assistant Professor at the HITsz. During his
doctoral study, he was awarded a full doctoral scholarship by
the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Victoria University
of Wellington. His main research area is the bottom-up
human-centered architectural design concept. Using VR,
BIM, and gamification to create an interactive environment.
At present, he has published nearly 30 international journal
and conference papers with some published and distributed
by Springer. He is also the organizing committee member
and reviewer of computer-aided Architectural Design
Research in Asia (CAADRIA), Architectural Science
Association (ANZAScA), and other international well-known
conferences.
Data availability statement
The data that support the findings of this study are available
from the corresponding author: LO T.upon reasonable
request.
Institutional review board statement
This study involves no greater than minimal risk to the
participants and informed consent were obtained in
advance. This research did not involve a prospective eva­
luation, did not involve interventional studies (human or
animal) and only involved non-invasive physiological
detecting and devices. The rights and welfare of the
participants will not be adversely affected. Hence this
research did not obtain ethical approval.
 JOURNAL OF ASIAN ARCHITECTURE AND BUILDING ENGINEERING
Informed consent statement
Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in
the study.
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