## 4 Conclusions  
Industry is under pressure to shorten the time taken for new products to enter the market. Our study found that virtual-reality technology is a powerful tool for enhancing the redesign process in industrial product development.  
When compared to conventional usability testing and design reviews, virtual-reality technology improves the process by visualizing new angles that stimulate novel insights, increasing team engagement, providing more intuitive interactions for non-CAD specialists, saving redesign costs and time, and increasing participant safety.  
Virtual-reality-based prototypes have to address technological challenges, such as a lack of realism owing to unnatural tactile and visual interactions, latency and registration issues, communication difficulties across teams, and unpleasant symptoms.  
However, a significant technological breakthrough occurred only a few years ago, with the first public release of technologically mature virtual reality equipment. The devices remain relatively expensive and technical constraints exist, but the price of virtual reality equipment decreased year on year, technological constraints have been reduced, and new features have been developed, resulting in the increased development of VR applications.  
There has since been a significant growth in global research on virtual reality. In terms of inventions, we observed a scenario in which patent applications have boomed since 2016, in a technology space that is rapidly evolving, offering opportunities to enter an area while it is still young. Thus, this exponential growth in patent applications for virtual reality, design review, and usability testing should continue for a few more years.  
Previous forecasts estimated that the worldwide virtual reality market would expand from $6.30 billion in 2021 to $84.09 billion in 2028, but the COVID-19 outbreak encouraged the use of virtual reality even more. Therefore, this increase might be considerably larger.  
As a result, an increasing number of companies are contemplating implementing virtual-reality-based design reviews and usability tests without fully comprehending the overall advantages and restrictions. Our findings on inventions, current application fields, methods, and hardware and software used--as well as the benefits and challenges of combining virtual reality with conventional design reviews on flat screens or physical prototypes in usability testing--may serve as a reference for decision-makers and researchers as they continue to develop novel solutions for the industrial product development process.  
Conceptualization, methodology, investigation: F.V.d.F., M.V.M.G. and I.W., writing--original draft preparation, and writing--review and editing: F.V.d.F. and I.W. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
Funding: The authors would like to thank for financial support from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). IW is a CNPq technological development fellow (Proc. 308783/2020-4). Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable. Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable. Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.