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From Brick to Click: Comparing LEGO Building in Virtual Reality and the Physical World

Viktorija Paneva, Maximilian David, Jörg Müller

TL;DR

This study compares LEGO building in three environments—physical world, VR, and VR with enhanced features called superpowers—to understand how a familiar hands-on activity translates to virtual spaces and how VR enhancements affect engagement and creativity. Using a within-subject design with 22 participants performing assembly and creative tasks, the authors quantify performance metrics, user experience, and material usage across conditions. Key findings show that while physical LEGO preserves tactile familiarity for assembly, VR with superpowers substantially boosts free-building creativity and efficiency, though it can introduce overwhelm due to available options; participants also report strong appeal for features like unlimited bricks, colorable bricks, and mini-figure perspective. The work yields design guidance for VR building tools, highlighting the need to balance automation with user control and to develop intuitive interfaces that scaffold creativity, with implications for education, training, entertainment, and therapy as VR technologies evolve.

Abstract

We present a comparative study of building with LEGO in three environments: the physical world, a Virtual Reality (VR) counterpart, and a VR setting enhanced with "superpowers". The study aims to understand how traditional creative hands-on activities translate to virtual environments, with potential benefits for educational, training, entertainment, and therapeutic uses. 22 participants engaged in both structured assembly and creative free-building tasks across these environments. We investigated differences in user performance, engagement, and creativity, with a focus on how the additional VR functionalities influenced the building experience. The findings reveal that while the physical environment offers a familiar tactile experience, VR, particularly with added superpowers, was clearly favoured by participants in the creative free-building scenario. Our recommendations for VR design include balancing automation with user control to enhance task efficiency while maintaining engagement, and implementing intuitive systems that manage complexity to prevent user overwhelm and support creative freedom.

From Brick to Click: Comparing LEGO Building in Virtual Reality and the Physical World

TL;DR

This study compares LEGO building in three environments—physical world, VR, and VR with enhanced features called superpowers—to understand how a familiar hands-on activity translates to virtual spaces and how VR enhancements affect engagement and creativity. Using a within-subject design with 22 participants performing assembly and creative tasks, the authors quantify performance metrics, user experience, and material usage across conditions. Key findings show that while physical LEGO preserves tactile familiarity for assembly, VR with superpowers substantially boosts free-building creativity and efficiency, though it can introduce overwhelm due to available options; participants also report strong appeal for features like unlimited bricks, colorable bricks, and mini-figure perspective. The work yields design guidance for VR building tools, highlighting the need to balance automation with user control and to develop intuitive interfaces that scaffold creativity, with implications for education, training, entertainment, and therapy as VR technologies evolve.

Abstract

We present a comparative study of building with LEGO in three environments: the physical world, a Virtual Reality (VR) counterpart, and a VR setting enhanced with "superpowers". The study aims to understand how traditional creative hands-on activities translate to virtual environments, with potential benefits for educational, training, entertainment, and therapeutic uses. 22 participants engaged in both structured assembly and creative free-building tasks across these environments. We investigated differences in user performance, engagement, and creativity, with a focus on how the additional VR functionalities influenced the building experience. The findings reveal that while the physical environment offers a familiar tactile experience, VR, particularly with added superpowers, was clearly favoured by participants in the creative free-building scenario. Our recommendations for VR design include balancing automation with user control to enhance task efficiency while maintaining engagement, and implementing intuitive systems that manage complexity to prevent user overwhelm and support creative freedom.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 18 sections, 4 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. Apparatus
  4. Pilot Study
  5. User Study
  6. Results
  7. User Experience
  8. Perceived Fun
  9. Preferred Conditions
  10. Enjoyment Of Additional Features
  11. Performance
  12. Assembly Completion Times
  13. Assembly Errors
  14. Duration and Brick Usage in the Creative Task
  15. Duration
  16. ...and 3 more sections

Figures (4)

  • Figure 1: In the pilot study, participants built the structure (A) in VR (B) and the real world (C).
  • Figure 2: Superpowers for building with LEGO in VR. (A) Spawning a new brick from a starter brick. (B) Colouring a brick by using a virtual paintbrush and paint buckets. (C) Positioning and exploring the structure from the perspective of the LEGO figure. (D) Automatically spawning the required bricks for each step as the user turns the pages of the instructions.
  • Figure 3: Time taken for the assembly task (A) and free creative building (B) across the RW, VR, and AVR conditions. (C) Creative structures built by participants ID 3 (left) and ID 4 (right) in AVR, which would be challenging to construct in the physical world.
  • Figure 4: Comparison of the total number of bricks (A) and the variety of brick types (B) used across the RW, VR, and AVR conditions. (C) Comparison of the creative structures built by two participants (top row ID 19, bottom row ID 22) in each of the three conditions.