Seung Hyun Cha

1. Digital technologies have reshaped knowledge work and expanded digitally mediated forms of work practice (Šímová, Zychová, and Fejfarová 2024). Traditionally, such work has been conducted throug...

Purpose: This study aims to explore how spatial design personalization influences users’ emotional, cognitive and functional experiences in immersive virtual reality workspaces (VRWSs), addressing the lack of understanding about how user-driven spatial design in VRWSs shapes workspace satisfaction and perceived productivity. Design/methodology/approach: Seventy-three participants performed work tasks in a prototype of a VRWS for personalization in two conditions, baseline and personalized, and participated in semistructured narrative interviews. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to uncover mechanisms of personalization, supported by iterative code refinement with coauthors. Findings: Participants reported enhanced emotional comfort, autonomy and engagement under personalization, while baseline environments were perceived to support concentration through visual minimalism. Users tended to strongly prefer large-scale environmental personalization such as background scenery. The findings reveal a dual-path pattern in which baseline and personalized environments influence experience through distinct emotional and cognitive routes. Practical implications: Designers may prioritize high-impact spatial design personalization options and support adaptive workspace layouts, while minimizing usability barriers that restrict customization. Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study provides one of the first large-scale qualitative analyses of VRWS personalization and introduces a novel dual-path pattern explaining how different spatial designs shape user experience through emotional and cognitive mechanisms.

Given the growing demand for the active utilization of underground spaces, understanding their effects on humans is crucial. However, constructing physical underground spaces for research is often costly and inflexible. In response, virtual reality (VR) provides a flexible and cost-effective alternative for simulating such environments and evaluating human responses. Yet, accurately replicating the experience of being underground in VR remains challenging. This study proposes a novel framework-Virtual Reality Transition to Underground (VRTU)-designed to stimulate the experience of descending from aboveground to underground environments. VRTU incorporates a sequential transition process through aboveground, transporting, and underground spaces, each enhanced with multimodal sensory cues to promote immersion. To validate this framework, we conducted an experiment within the VRTU environment, assessing participants' responses using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), Igroup Presence Questionnaire (IPQ), a cognitive task, a subjective perception questionnaire, and heart rate measurement. Results revealed a significant increase in negative affect state following exposure to the VR-based underground space, along with physiological changes consistent with real-world underground settings. These findings demonstrate that the VRTU framework effectively captures core aspects of the underground space experience and offers a viable tool for evaluating human responses in immersive simulations prior to physical implementation.

In contemporary interior environments, the co‐existence of diverse functions and heterogeneous user groups within a single physical setting has become increasingly prevalent, driving the need for real‐time spatial reconfiguration that accommodates users’ activities, temporal rhythms, and privacy requirements. Although emerging robotic technologies have opened new avenues for adaptive interactive design, there remains a paucity of quantitative and objective metrics to guide the kinematic and cognitive underpinnings of space–user interaction. To address this gap, we propose an integrated Human–Space Interaction (HSI) framework that systematically delineates the factors underpinning precise, bidirectional engagement between occupants and dynamically reconfigurable architectures. Drawing upon a comprehensive review of prior studies that examine users’ responses to active spatial transformations, we classify relevant variables under three principal domains: Space, Human, and Kinematics. They are organized according to three interaction typologies: (1) user‐driven spatial change, (2) impact of dynamic spatial elements on users, and (3) influence of static spatial attributes on initial user behavior and state. This framework reveals a cyclical relationship among users’ physiological and behavioral states, and spatial dynamics. To validate the framework’s applicability, we developed a prototype environment and accompanying scenario in which movable partitions responded in real time to user gestures and task demands; empirical evaluation demonstrated enhanced usability and user acceptance. Our contributions include (a) a theoretically grounded framework of HSI variables, (b) design guidelines for the development of user‐centric interactive spaces, and (c) empirical evidence supporting the framework’s efficacy.