Evaluating Design Review Efficiency and Cognitive Load: 2D vs 3D vs Immersive VR

Paper in proceeding, 2025

Failure to identify design errors early on can have significant impact on construction projects costs, environmental impact, and overall client satisfaction. Traditional design review processes rely heavily on reviewing 2D drawings and 3D models to identify design errors, often resulting in suboptimal performance. Recently, immersive VR has emerged as a promising solution, offering additional benefits in terms of improving the design review process. However, there is a lack of systematic research focusing on the benefits of immersive VR compared to 2D and 3D in a design review context. This study addresses this gap, by investigating both efficiency and cognitive processing. In an experimental setting, participants were given the task of conducting a design review. All participants conducted the review of the same design proposal in three different conditions: 2D, 3D, and immersive VR. Our results show that participants performed significantly better in 3D over 2D, and significantly better in VR than in 3D, and perceived themselves as more confident in 3D and VR. We also demonstrate that cognitive load followed the same pattern in that it is significantly lower in the VR setting. Taken together, our results strengthen the promise of VR as a useful tool for design review.