Learning to Build Extended Reality Applications for Customized Devices: A Survey Study

The paper presents results of survey studies performed with international groups of experts and students, focusing on building process of virtual, augmented and mixed reality applications for engineering, featuring customized prosthetic devices. In the first part of the study, three applications featuring a customized, automatically designed model of a 3D printed upper limb prosthesis were prepared using Unity game engine, one per each XR (extended reality) technology. Of these applications, three instruction manuals were created. In the first part of the experiments, a group of engineering experts without prior XR knowledge attempted to build the applications along the provided instructions. In the second part, the same process was repeated with a group of mixed engineering students. Both experts and students were subjected to a survey study, assessing the process of building XR applications and their own capabilities of learning to work with these applications. The results are presented in this paper. It was found that the experts’ assessment of easiness and intuitiveness of working with the game engine was considerably lower than the same evaluation performed by students. The results have been implemented in the didactic and engineering practice.