Assessing People’s Efficiency in Workplaces by Coupling Immersive Environments and Virtual Sounds

The use of virtual reality (VR) to study the effect of the acoustic environment on performance is still in its infancy, despite its many potentialities due to audio-visual improvement. In this study, a binaural soundtrack was generated and integrated within an immersive virtual environment of an office room, to evaluate the effects of an acoustic ambient on users’ cognitive performance and subjective evaluation. To generate the soundtrack, five disrupting sound sources (phone rings, machine noise, mechanical systems, human-based sounds and acoustical effects) were selected. 104 participants performed three productivity tests (working memory, inhibition, task switching) and answered questionnaires under a constant indoor air temperature (24 ℃). In particular, an independent measure experimental design was conducted: each group (52 subjects) randomly performed one test session: a no-ambient-noise condition or «quiet environment» was compared to a treated-with-noise condition, or «noisy environment» virtual session. The authors focused on two goals: verifying the external-ecological validity of the virtual model created and evaluating the effect of the sound stimuli on productivity. Findings revealed that the virtual office created an excellent level of presence and immersivity and confirmed, as expected, that work efficiency was negatively influenced by the ambient noise. A decrease in performance was detected in each cognitive test, as the subject evaluated the sound environment to be uncomfortable, chaotic and boring. Hence, the results supported the potentialities of the proposed acoustic virtual reality to study productivity in combination with different stimuli and layouts.