Comparing Conventional versus Immersive Service Prototypes: An Empirical Study

Abdul Rahman Abdel Razek,Christian Van Husen,Marc Pallot,Simon Richir

doi:10.20870/ijvr.2019.19.2.2914

Abstract

For years, Immersive Technologies and 3D printing, demonstrated their capacity to quickly build product prototypes in order to reach a common understanding among all stakeholders, especially potential users. Service prototyping is a novel agile process intended to accelerate the service development, while improving the overall anticipated service experience. The use of Immersive Technologies in service prototyping is intended to enable a co-creative and explorative service experience, even before the service really exists. Service prototyping transforms intangible processes into a real experience. Immersive Technologies are already deployed in several industrial applications ranging from product design to product and service exploration. They are also used for conducting training even before the product or service exists. The main concern remains in the fact that there is a lack of study for comparing and selecting the most appropriate form of Service Prototypes (SP) to explore a new service. This paper presents our empirical study comparing different SP forms and the results of two experiment sessions that were conducted at ENSAM Laval and Angers campuses. These results reveal that participants preferred immersive forms rather than conventional forms. However, it also unveils some difficulties in properly handling Immersive Technologies.

Highlights

Service is defined as a process, in which organizations are intended to deliver intangible and tangible features, that creates a value for the customer (ISO/IEC 20000-1 Information Technology, 2005)
The results show that: (1) Augmented Reality SP (ARSP) was the most highly rated overall and the highest rated in 11 of the 15 properties; (2) Virtual Reality Service Prototype (VRSP) ranked highest in 4 properties and pretty good in the rest; (3) Paper Service Prototype” (PSP) was ranked lowest in every property; (4) Mock-up Service Prototype (MSP) was ranked relatively good in 10 properties but was ranked negatively in the remaining properties
There is a clear difference between the Immersive Service Prototype (ISP) and Conventional Service Prototype forms (CSP) forms in the participant’s ratings and comments; it appears that ISP ranked much higher than CSP in all the properties and in the average between them

Summary

Introduction

Service is defined as a process, in which organizations are intended to deliver intangible and tangible features, that creates a value for the customer (ISO/IEC 20000-1 Information Technology, 2005). SP attempts to transform an intangible service idea into a real experience allowing the service exploration, communication, and evaluation This enables service stakeholders to undertake informed decisions about service alternatives or market introduction even at the early stage; these informed decisions are based on stakeholders’ feedback after using a service prototype. The goal is to compare the performance of Conventional Service Prototypes (CSP) versus Immersive Service Prototypes (ISP) This experiment is based on the use of a specific service scenario where participants have to disassemble and reassemble a simple mechanical element composed of several parts. For completing these two tasks, participants have to use paper SP and video SP (conventional SP forms), as well as VR SP and AR SP (immersive SP forms) in different sequences. We present the limitations of this study, some initial conclusion and future work

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion