Ubiquitous clerk and virtual planning office — Significance of actual products

摘要

This paper describes the virtual planning office “VPO” from the viewpoint of the quality of spatial comfort “QoSC” toward supplying attractive products for consumers, and constructs a prototype of the VPO system. In addition, the validity of the actual products' effects the VPO focuses on is verified through the prototype. The VPO is a new concept that sends consumers' preference on actual products to suppliers. The VPO has two agents. One agent is the ubiquitous clerk to extract consumers' preference on actual products in a shop. The other agent is the virtual designer that provides the consumers' preference information to the suppliers in a real planning office. In verification experiments, subjects draw designs of favorite T-shirts under different conditions, i.e., with/without actual T-shirts. After that, the each subject evaluates which design reflects the subject's preference best. The results show most subjects draw preferable designs with actual products rather than without them (p<0.01). Additionally, it is found that 88% of the subjects feel that actual products are useful to express their preference from answers of a post-test questionnaire. Consequently, significance of actual products and the VPO's potential to realize supplying preferable products are presented.