Understanding how the end users, ordinary citizens, experience designed public spaces is fundamental in the field of urban design. Virtual Reality (VR) technologies significantly enhance the ease of evaluating public space designs by creating virtual simulations. This allows users to immerse themselves more deeply in the space compared to traditional screen-based presentations. However, the true experience of space design only occurs once it is physically constructed. Designers still face challenges in effectively investigating how citizens might interact with the future space. In evaluating public space designs, one obstacle is that users can only provide feedback based on individual experiences, lacking knowledge of how others have perceived or used the space, which contrasts with the real world situations where people experience and perceive public spaces with the association with how others’ experiences.

Trace visualizations have been used to analyze user behaviors. Visualizing traces of previous users unlocks possibilities of enhancing curiosity and meaningful exploration of the space, which could inspire more association about use scenarios and a deeper understanding of the spatial properties, and eventually benefit the evaluation outcomes. 

This project explored the influences of visualizing human traces on users’ explorative behaviors in virtual reality space. We started with conducting interviews with urban designers to understand the utilization of traces in the processes of public space design and their perspectives regarding implementing trace visualizations to support public space design evaluation. Insights from the interview informed the selection of traces for the experiment including user pathways, gathering situation, full-body motion, and space atmosphere. Subsequently, we integrated trace visualizations into a VR shopping street and conducted the experiment with 20 participants to evaluate the impacts of each trace visualization on user exploration. The outcomes from interviews and operational activities undertaken by participants revealed exploration patterns associated with each type of the trace visualizations and related findings concerning user perceptions of the trace visualizations. The project concluded with the implications for implementing trace visualizations in VR environments and the limitations of the research.