Anthropocentric approach in the design of Virtual Environments for SMEs

As part of the 3D-Child project, the Children Center of Excellence of Cholet wants to provide member companies (mostly small-to-medium size companies, or SME´s) with a Virtual Reality tool to help them design and evaluate their future products. This collaborative tool will allow for increased creativity within the teams, and reduced design lead-time. This paper presents the advantages of an anthropocentric approach in designing Virtual Environments (VE) dedicated to new products design and evaluation. First, a definition of "anthropocentric design" is provided. Then, an implementation methodology based on field observations of the system´s future users is described. Finally, survey results of conscious needs assessed through focus groups and questionnaires are presented.