Understanding ownership effects within the human-centred XR co-design process for aircraft cabin concepts

Kurzfassung

In user-centred aircraft cabin design, Extended Reality (XR) co-design enables early, immersive user involvement, translating stakeholder needs in real time into novel design concepts. While prior research has focused on technical aspects, social and psychological dynamics, such as ownership effects, remain underexplored across different immersion levels in XR co-design. This study investigates how physical and virtual design elements influence ownership perceptions among aircraft passengers. As part of DLR’s EXACT2 hydrogen aircraft project, 72 participants collaboratively designed a cabin space for passengers as additional area besides the own seat using two XR co-design variants: (1) Purely virtual (n = 43), using AR (Meta Quest 3, Gravity Sketch) for 1:20 to 1:1 virtual co-creation; (2) hybrid (n = 29), starting with physical 3D-printed 1:20-scale components before Augmented Reality (AR)-based refinement. Psychological and individual ownership were assessed post-design. Both XR co-design approaches were successfully performed and analysed.