Buildings are very cost and resource intensive objects. Their longevity and limited changeability require very careful planning. In addition to technical, ecological and economic aspects, aspects of building use in particular must be taken into account. However, such human-centered aspects are difficult to quantify. For lack of methods to objectively assess the user perspective, planners usually rely on their intuition. However, if the actual behaviour of the future users does not match the anticipated behaviour, this can lead to dissatisfaction with the respective building.

The aim of the project OpenVREVAL is to develop a virtual reality (VR) based evaluation methodology that makes it possible to make valid statements about the behaviour and emotions of different user groups already in the early planning phases. For this purpose, an open framework for the creation of questionnaires and interactions in VR is being developed. This framework should allow architects to quickly record use- and experience related criteria from a large number of potential building users for their specific case.

After completion of the project, planning variants can be systematically evaluated with regard to user experience & behaviour and the results of the evaluation can be visualised and analysed easily. In practice, this should serve as a basis for discussion to improve the design of buildings. Furthermore, it enables citizens to be actively involved in planning processes. This is a decisive factor for the creation of sustainable building concepts. As a long-term vision for the application of the developed method, a "user-friendliness certification" is conceivable. Furthermore, it is possible to use the collected data to create predictive models using artificial intelligence.