Demographics in Extended Reality Research in the Built Environment

Abstract

Extended Reality (XR) technologies have been widely researched to support various architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO) industry use cases through advanced visualization and information delivery approaches. Researchers frequently designed human subject experiments for performance measurement of their proposed XR tools. Whereas many focused on the solution, little research provided insights into the demographic background of experiment participants, which has the potential to significantly impact results. This paper reviewed 104 articles published in top-rated academic journals that conducted human subject experiments for XR-AECO applications during the last 20 years. The authors identified user experience, age, and gender as key demographic characteristics. The results show that current experiment participants were biased toward students, which does not align with the age and experience background of construction industry professionals. The authors also recommended a standard demographic data report structure to help develop a further understanding of the impact of participant demographics on performance measurements.