Abstract
The increasing adoption of immersive technologies is reshaping workplaces by enabling new forms of virtual collaboration. However, this shift raises concerns about worker well-being, aligning with the principles of Industry 5.0.
In this research, we promote the use of biophilic design to enhance well-being in XR working environments. It is based on the Biophilia hypothesis, which suggests humans have an inherent connection to nature. Integrating natural elements (such as plants, nature-inspired visuals, and natural sounds) into environments can enhance health, productivity, and overall well-being.
The goal is to propose validated guidelines for Biophilic Design in industrial XR settings, regarding spatial, temporal, and appearance variables. To evaluate the effect of these variables, user experience assessments are conducted, measuring performance and well-being through self-reports and physiological data. Techniques include questionnaires and biometric measurements (heart rate, respiration, skin conductance, blood pressure, and eye tracking).
Projects
BIOXRE
(December 2023 – November 2025)
PRIN 2022 PNRR “BIOphilic design of Extended Reality working Environments (BIOXRE),” PRIN 2022-PNRR, CUP D53D23017380001, Principal Investigator: Prof. Michele Gattullo. The project see also the involvement of the Research Unit of Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR).
BIOXRE aims to exploit the biophilic design to XR applications supporting procedural tasks. The goal is to improve the wellbeing of human operators without affecting their performance in accomplishing manual tasks supported by XR visualization. The outcome of the project will be to extract guidelines for the biophilic design of virtual environments that will derive from a well-structured user evaluation in the target industrial scenario. We rely on the achievement of three main research objectives:
- Definition of a workflow for the measurement of human wellbeing
- Development of a biophilic designed XR environment for user testing
- Definition of validated guidelines on the biophilic design of industrial XR environments
Main publications
Romano, S., Laviola, E., Uva, A. E., & Gattullo, M. (2024, September). METAGREENVERSE: Exploring the User Experience in a Biophilic Metaverse Workspace. In International Conference of the Italian Association of Design Methods and Tools for Industrial Engineering (pp. 287-294). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
Romano, S., Laviola, E., Uva, A. E., & Gattullo, M. (2023, November). Biophilic Design of Virtual Workplaces: Effect of Animations on User Attention. In International Conference on Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality (pp. 201-214). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
Gattullo, M., Laviola, E., Romano, S., Evangelista, A., Manghisi, V. M., Fiorentino, M., & Uva, A. E. (2022, October). Biophilic enriched virtual environments for industrial training: a user study. In 2022 IEEE international symposium on mixed and augmented reality (ISMAR) (pp. 206-214). IEEE.