Contextualizing Construction Incident Reports in Virtual Environments

Abstract

Safety education is important in the construction industry. While research has been done on virtual environments for construction safety education, there is no set method for effectively contextualizing safety information and engaging students. In this research, we study the design of an application to represent construction accident reports provided by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA). In a Case Study we designed and implemented two applications, each with a unique virtual environment to contextualize an incident report through space, visuals, and text. We also conducted a user study for how interaction techniques affect learning, focusing on the system device and varying levels of navigational control. From the user and case study results we present design guidelines for creating an interactive application to represent a construction incident report.