Visual communication effectiveness of a 3D building directory system: Case of the Joseph Wibowo Center Campus

Abstract

The 3D-based technology for web-based application development has gain wide attention recently and emerged as an alternative for its 2D-based counterpart technology. Although numerous studies have been reported on developing web-based applications based on 3D technology, however, to the best of our knowledge, little is known on evaluating its visual communication efectiveness of this technology for a directory system in a university campus setting. This paper presents a case on the performance comparison between 3D directory system and 2D directory system in terms of visual communication effectiveness. Visual communication effectiveness of the building directory system is measured using time needed to learn overall building layout and time needed to find the predetermined location of interest. In this research, it is assumed that effectivity variable was only depends solely on the chosen technology to develop directory system. The tested 3D and 2D directory systems in this research are based on the Joseph Wibowo Center Campus building layout. The experiment involving volunteers found that the 3D directory system caused reduction of about 25% of time to learn the building layout in compared to that using its 2D counterpart. For locating a place, 2D directory system caused increase of about 6% time to locate the location of interest in compared to that without directory. While, 3D directory system caused reduction of about 19% time to locate the location of interest in compared to that without directory.