Older adults face significant loss and limitations in terms of mobility, cognitive ability, and socialization. By using augmented reality and virtual reality technologies they have the potential to overcome such loss and limitations, and to eventually improve their quality of life. However, this group is often excluded in augmented reality and virtual reality deployment. Further, limited studies address their challenges when using augmented reality and virtual reality. Therefore, for a critical review of augmented reality and virtual reality for older adults, we developed a framework to evaluate related factors, including physical, social, and psychological wellbeing. Through the critical review, we identified that most augmented reality and virtual reality studies focus on physical wellbeing of older adults but also make substantial efforts to increase their psychological wellbeing. Fun factors that would motivate them are also extensively considered. Further, social isolation continues to be a significant issue for older adults, but the appropriate content to increase their social wellbeing is insufficient, although many commercial products have been developed. The contribution of the present study is to provide a contextual framework and an evaluation framework for the critical review of augmented reality and virtual reality technologies to promote wellbeing in older adults. This study also suggests the augmented reality and virtual reality research direction for studies on this group by identifying the research gap through the critical review process. Lastly, this study investigates design directions of augmented reality and virtual reality for older adults by introducing challenges and design issues that emerged through the critical review.

Various smart services and technologies have been developed to support older adults' well-ness, make their daily tasks easier, and enhance their overall quality of life. When people grow older, older adults inevitably experience a significant decrease in their physical, cognitive, and sensory capabilities, which makes them develop negative attitudes toward technology. In this regard, this study highlights that older adults require not only usable and practical spaces but also smart residential environments that can fulfill them emotionally. Research on smart environments for this population should consider the hedonic and experiential factors of interacting with technology, such as fun, fulfillment, play, and user engagement. This study aims to provide a comprehensive review of smart residential environments to support positive aging and pleasurable user experience in the architecture domain. For this critical review emphasizing the pleasurable smart environment, an evaluation framework was developed, consisting of four categories: well-ness, independence, acceptance, and design. Through an extensive analysis of selected papers in the architecture domain, it was found that studies on the smart home tend to focus on utilitarian factors, such as usability, monitoring physical experiences, and simulating energy efficiency, and rarely mention psychological well-ness. Smart environments should be designed to not only emphasize efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction but also to engage older adults and provide them positive experiences. As various smart technologies continue to evolve and integrate into smart living spaces, it is important to understand older adults' cognitive and emotional aspects and make the smart environment a more comfortable place for them.

The integration of building information modeling (BIM) and geographic information system (GIS) is attracting more attention than ever due to its potential benefits for both the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) domain and the geospatial industry. The main challenge in BIM and GIS integrated application comes from the fundamental data conversion, especially for the geometric information. BIM and GIS use different modeling paradigms to represent objects. The BIM dataset takes, for example, Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) that use solid models, such as boundary representation (B-Rep), swept solid, constructive solid geometry (CSG), and clipping, while the GIS dataset mainly uses surface models or B-Rep. The fundamental data conversion between BIM and GIS is the foundation of BIM and GIS integrated application. However, the efficiency of data conversion has been greatly impaired by the human intervention needed, especially for the conversion of the clipping geometry. The goal of this study is to automate the conversion of IFC clipping representation into the shapefile format. A process-level approach was developed with an algorithm for instantiating unbounded half spaces using B-Rep. Four IFC models were used to validate the proposed method. The results show that (1) the proposed approach can successfully automate the conversion of IFC clipping representation into the shapefile format; and (2) increasing boundary size has no effect on the file size of unbounded half spaces, but slightly increases the producing time of half spaces and processing time of building components. The efficiency of this study can be further improved by using an open-source package, instead of using the low-efficiency packages provided by ArcGIS.

Most studies on tangible user interfaces for the tabletop design systems are being undertaken from a technology viewpoint. Although there have been studies that focus on the development of new interactive environments employing tangible user interfaces for designers, there is a lack of evaluation with respect to designers' spatial cognition. In this research we study the effects of tangible user interfaces on designers' spatial cognition to provide empirical evidence for the anecdotal views of the effect of tangible user interfaces. To highlight the expected changes in spatial cognition while using tangible user interfaces, we compared designers using a tangible user interface on a tabletop system with 3D blocks to designers using a graphical user interface on a desktop computer with a mouse and keyboard. The ways in which designers use the two different interfaces for 3D design were examined using a protocol analysis method. The result reveals that designers using 3D blocks perceived more spatial relationships among multiple objects and spaces and discovered new visuo-spatial features when revisiting their design configurations. The designers using the tangible interfaces spent more time in relocating objects to different locations to test the moves, and interacted with the external representation through large body movements implying an immersion in the design model. These two physical actions assist in designers' spatial cognition by reducing cognitive load in mental visual reasoning. Further, designers using the tangible interfaces spent more time in restructuring the design problem by introducing new functional issues as design requirements and produced more discontinuities to the design processes, which provides opportunity for reflection and modification of the design. Therefore this research shows that tangible user interfaces changes designers' spatial cognition, and the changes of the spatial cognition are associated with creative design processes.