An important component of such a design system is the ability to see information from heterogeneous perspectives, including not only those from multiple physical viewpoints, but those from multiple mental models. In the following sections we will describe these ideas in greater detail. This concept of applying heterogeneous perspectives to a design environment was motivated by two informal surveys conducted on veteran architects and architecture students. Our findings are summarized below. The CAD phase is considered the least creative and most tedious phase of design, but is described as the most obvious phase to apply VR as a way to impress clients through VR walk-throughs.
Collaboration is a crucial part of the design process.
Architects spend approximately equal amounts of time in informal meetings with colleagues, as they do in formal scheduled meetings with colleagues, clients, and engineers. More work is done in informal collaboration, where the emphasis is on the exploration of ideas, compared to formal collaboration, which mostly consists of confirming designs brought to the meetings. 3 Multiple Perspectives in Design One of the obvious affordances of VR is its ability to depict environments from an ego-centric perspective, where participants are immersed in the environment. This has been leveraged by many researchers to produce 3D walk-throughs of architectural spaces. These implementations have been successful because they offer clients the ability to tour a building design before it is built.