Keywords

1 Introduction

In modern times, rapid development of computer science and technology, multimedia, digital imaging technology is also gradually mature. The application of these technologies has effectively improved the imaging quality of electronic devices, increased the transmission speed of electronic data, and promoted the maturity and application of virtual reality technology, augmented reality technology and mixed reality technology. The use and promotion of digital technology in daily life has attracted widespread attention and has increasingly influenced our way of life and concept of life (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.
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Interactive cities

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Different times have put forward different requirements for the meaning and content of design. The purpose and object of design is always to take human needs as the primary starting point, to coordinate the relationship between human beings and the environment as the main body, to pay attention to the return of human nature, and to feel a variety of psychological feelings, such as security, domain, belonging and identity, which can not be neglected. Visual factors. However, in the information society, the era of media leading everything, people’s “sense of participation” should be given great attention. In the landscape design of the new era, the interaction between people and landscape is regarded as the starting point of design. It is one of the ways to adapt to the characteristics of the times and solve practical problems to create new landscape works with modern electronic technology and digital media.

In recent years, the application of digital technology and computer technology has made some achievements in many fields, and its combination with the industry is a new trend of the times. In this context, how to break through the limitations of traditional landscape design and rationally and effectively use digital technology to practice urban landscape design is the direction that designers are gradually thinking and exploring. Especially with the widespread spread of electronic devices such as smartphones and computers into life, people can have multiple experiences without leaving home, making the real experience of outdoor landscapes and people’s lives gradually separated. The use of digital technology to transform, adjust and improve the concept and method of landscape design can change the predicament of the current traditional landscape design, and thus meet the needs of people’s lifestyle in the digital age of computers.

2 Start of the Art

The development of human interaction technology originated from the concept of entity bits. Tangible Bits (TB) was proposed by MIT’s renowned scholars Hirroshi Ishii and Brygg Ullmer at the 1997 CHI conference. Hirroshi Ishii et al. pointed out in their published paper that entity bits enable users to directly access and process bits by combining bits with everyday transactions. Based on this concept, TUI comes into being as the Tangible User Interface (TUI), and is gradually applied in the information and digital world. Users can touch and process digital information, thus making the information exchange more convenient. In addition, Hirroshi Ishii believes that the physical user interface will become the main form of human-computer interaction technology in the future with its convenient application features. Applying it to human-computer interaction systems can fully play its important role in promoting the development of environmental space, building surfaces and atomic coupling (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.
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Human-computer interaction

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In view of the great advantages and development potential of physical user interface, practitioners in many different industries at home and abroad have gradually begun to explore the combination and practice of this technology with their own industry. In 2011, Australian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer developed the “Tape Recorders” experience device. The principle of the device is that 40 tapes are arranged side by side at equal intervals. Each tape measure can be independently lifted and lowered by motor control. After the information such as the distance between the visitor and the tape measure and the dwell time is collected, it is converted into different heights of the tape measure. When the tape measure rises to a certain height, it will make a sound due to the bending, at this time, the motor will restore the tape measure and circulate the process. Visitors can get interesting experiences by comparing the heights that each other can make the tape measure. This novel art installation brings an unprecedented interactive experience that attracts many visitors. In 2013, Israeli scientists Oren Zuckerman and Ayelet Gal-Oz compared the experience of physical user interfaces and traditional graphical user interfaces (GUIs) based on previous research experience. The study collected 58 subjects, and analyzed the characteristics of TUI and CUI using the statistical analysis of sample characteristics of preference and performance, finally found that most of the subjects were more inclined to use physical user interface of human-computer interaction system, mainly because the entity form of user interface, with a more convenient form of interaction and more abundant information resources. In addition, TANGIBLE GROUP, a scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, released its research project, the Transform device in 2013. The device is an intuitive experience device based on TUI technology, it is a square matrix composed of many small squares. By collecting and recognizing the user’s behavioral intent, the information is transformed into a lifting instruction for each small square. In other words, users can transform the way information is exchanged into a three-dimensional contact and experience. The invention of this device is of great significance for the future use of physical interaction technology in space design, architectural design and landscape design. Another application example of physical interaction design technology is Hexi Wall, a work of art designed by Canadian designer Thibault et al. in 2014. The work is a building wall that can interact with the experience. It is composed of a number of scale devices, each of which can be controlled to perform independent multi-axis flipping. Information such as the distance between the experiencer and the building, and the behavioral intentions of the experiencer can be inadvertently recognized and transformed into scales, bringing intelligent communication experience, and being widely welcomed by the experiencers and highly regarded by designers in many industries.

At present, there are few theoretical and practical applications in human-computer interaction technology and virtual reality in China. The related theoretical works on virtual interactive technology are mostly from the translation of foreign works. The article “Get Real: A Philosophical Adventure in Virtual Reality” by Professor Zhen Zhenming of Sun Yat-sen University is one of the masterpieces of virtual reality technology. In terms of application practice, the National CD Engineering Research Center of Tsinghua University has long started the combination of digital technology and landscape design. They used this technology to realize the virtual reality experience of the Potala Palace. In addition, virtual reality technology has gradually been applied by landscape companies to the performance of landscape design. They display the landscape design through special effects or stereo test demonstration halls, especially before the formal delivery, using this technology to test the effect, saving material costs and increase project adoption rates. In general, the development of digital technology and interactive technology in China is relatively late. Until 2014, related concepts such as virtual reality technology and augmented reality technology gradually entered the public’s field of vision, and the combination of digital technology and landscape design still needs to be explored.

Under the background of the rapid development of computer technology, how to combine digital and urban landscape design is an important issue that breaks through the limitations of traditional landscape design under the external conditions of virtual reality, augmented reality and multimedia technology. By incorporating interactive interaction technology into the landscape design concept, the new human-computer interaction and landscape-focused landscape design pattern is fundamentally different from the traditional landscape, bringing the experience to a completely different and vivid experience. This landscape design model is also a new experience for designers, who can enjoy the creative process with more convenient, deeper and more interactive means. This immersive, interactive and digital creative experience is also incomparable to traditional landscape creation methods.

3 Methodology

3.1 Concepts of Interaction Design and Human-Computer Interaction Design

The concept of interaction design was proposed by Bill Mogrich in 1984, who generalized interaction design to the design of product use, task flow and information structure, and applied digital technology to the design process. Since then, interactive design has gradually become an independent discipline that has received widespread attention. According to Alan Cooper, interaction design is a technology that designs the behavior of people, the environment, and the system, and conveys the meaning of its behavior by appearance elements. The purpose of interaction design is to improve the user experience and make the process of using the product more convenient and effective. First of all, the basic starting point of interaction design is the user’s feelings, designed around the central goal of user experience, the fundamental purpose of which is to improve the user experience and interaction in the process of work and life. Second, because of the complexity of the discipline itself and the intersection with other disciplines, the research is more extensive, and in the context of the development of computer technology and digital technology, the cross design conforms to the trend of the times, blends and integrates with many fields and many industries. In addition to the most basic computer, virtual reality, augmented reality and multimedia technology, crossover design has been applied in many aspects such as visual effects, artistic creation and service design. Crossover design has gradually become more diverse.

Human-computer interaction technology is a technology for studying the exchange of information between humans and computers, which uses various input and output devices to implement dialogue. It mainly includes two major structures: input device and output device. People can transfer information to a computer by means of an input device such as a mouse, a keyboard, a joystick, a position tracker, etc., and the computer provides a corresponding answer or prompt information through an output device such as a display or a speaker, thereby realizing human-computer interaction (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3.
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Application of human-computer interaction in life

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The use of human-computer interaction technology has greatly promoted the exchange of information between people and machines. With the continuous development of electronic information technology, people can break through the traditional and single communication mode of “human-mouse-machine” and gradually have a variety of communication options, such as advanced limb posture trackers, visual transmitters, tactile input channels and other advanced equipment to make human-computer interaction more comprehensive, accurate and convenient. This new and diversified human-computer interaction model is constantly integrated into all aspects of people’s daily life, which will bring new ideas to the limitations of urban landscapes breaking through traditional design. Especially under the impetus of science and technology, the computer can even intelligently perceive and recognize the interaction behavior and behavior intention of the experiencer, and actively complete the interaction through calculation. With the development of computer technology, the improvement of urban landscape design will receive great motivation (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4.
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Human-computer interactive information platform

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Under the trend of continuous integration of human-computer interaction technology and multiple fields, many urban landscape architects have gradually made relevant attempts. For example, using computer technology such as virtual reality to innovate the experience and communication between people and the space environment, and the designed spatial landscape through the technology to fully display its dynamic development process over time, greatly breaking the traditional landscape design limitations of operability (Fig. 5).

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Human-computer interaction system

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3.2 Elements of Human-Computer Interaction in Urban Landscape

The result of the landscape environment being connected to people through a link is called an interactive landscape, basically consisting of three components: interactive media, people and landscape elements. First of all, interactive media can be called interactive information, which is developed by two-way communication of information, such as the process from information sending and receiving to circular feedback. The change of content in the interactive medium is led by different interactive objects, and the output information is implicit and explicit from the perspective of the participants, which basically covers emotions, experience, knowledge and feelings, etc., and the individual has a direct impact on the interaction process after its absorption. While explicit information involves expressions, language, and behavior, and directly interprets and realizes landscape interaction. In addition, based on the perspective of landscape, there are two kinds of output information: image and object image, among which the object image is divided into dynamic scene and static scene: As the name implies, dynamic landscape content, such as image changes and morphological structure; the static scene is the judgment of the naked eye on the static landscape, such as color texture, proportion, scale and morphological structure. Contents such as knowledge, history, and culture can be reflected through intentions, while landscape intentions are the overall perception of the subject’s object. Secondly, the participants of the landscape, as the main body of the interactive landscape, can be further subdivided according to quantity, gender, age and socio-economic attributes. Finally, landscape elements are composed of physical form and landscape space, including natural landscape elements such as plants, soil, water, mountains and stones, as well as artificial landscape elements such as landscape sketches, facilities, roads and buildings, as well as immaterial landscape such as values, customs and habits, history and culture. By combing the definitions of the above components and interactive landscapes, a more concrete description can be developed by the following framework diagram, as shown in Fig. 6.

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Schematic diagram of essential element relationship formed by human-computer interaction landscape

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4 Discussion

4.1 Principles of Human-Computer Interaction in Urban Landscape Design

The design of human-computer interaction urban landscape basically follows the five principles of intensification, functional visibility, predictability, diversity and people-oriented, as shown in Fig. 7. Firstly, the principle of intensification is mainly reflected in the optimization of comprehensive income, specifically to maximize the role of environmental and ecological benefits, to meet the reasonable spirit and material needs of people, to maximize the conservation of natural resources and resources, so that energy and the utilization rate of resources has been improved to a certain extent, and in order to avoid over-design, the design principle can be maintained intensively, and then the landscape design is guided towards science. Secondly, the principle of functional visibility, that is, in order to facilitate people’s control of products and effectively improve the purity and ease of use of products, this principle can be used to design the product form, thereby triggering people to interact in the subconscious. At the same time, when designing interactive landscapes, the design of landscape facilities and landscape forms is basically based on instinctual cognition, which only pays attention to the habit of people to contact the external environment and neglect the behavior of thinking, so as to create interactive opportunities through metaphors. Finally, the predictive principle is that when the designer designs the human-interactive urban landscape, it has certain predictability based on user demand positioning and a large amount of practical research, and the maximum value of landscape output is due to the user’s anticipation of historical and cultural foresight, level of demand, psychological expectations and behavioral habits. Judging whether the foresight is successful depends on whether the user’s experience goal can be properly catered after the space and material form are designed. If the answer is yes, then the user’s expectations match the design of the landscape space, and the design at this time is predictable. The principle of diversity has two aspects, namely, diverse interaction means and diversified landscape design functions. The former is a variety of landscape interactions, based on the experience of different users, while the latter is to meet the needs of different people. The principle of people-oriented can be explained from four points, that is: First, coordinate the relationship between man and nature, the ultimate goal is to create a better living environment for people; second, care for many factors affecting people’s physiological psychology, such as social values, lifestyle, history and culture, etc.; third, in order to reflect humane care, fully consider the differences in environmental behavior; fourth, fully understand the user’s level of needs.

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Principles of human-computer interaction in urban landscape design

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4.2 Urban Landscape Design Strategy of Human-Computer Interaction

Firstly, the strategy of generating human-computer interaction urban landscape is shown in Fig. 8. Based on the use of digital technology, it is expressed through the design of human-computer interaction urban landscape. The different design features of digital technology play a decisive role in the way the landscape is used, its function and its shape. The following are the different technical advantages from the four levels of digital projection, mixed reality, augmented reality and virtual reality. First of all, digital projection, which is mostly applied to large public places, the biggest technical advantage is the naked-eye virtual landscape with large volume. Follow by, mixed reality is also to build a virtual landscape. Its working principle is to combine the field with electronic devices, and then present the digital information with dynamic effects. The biggest advantage of this technology application is that it enhances the interaction between users and virtual landscapes, thus enhancing the experience and quality of information acquisition. Next, the biggest difference between augmented reality and virtual reality is that it is closely connected to the site through the superposition of virtual information on the actual site. Therefore, the realization of this technology must rely on the actual site, and then expand and extend the virtual information. Last but not least is virtual reality. The most critical issue in designing a virtual reality system is how to build a realistic virtual environment, including 3D scenes, stereo sounds, and so on. In the human sense, visual ingestion has the largest amount of information, accounting for about 70%, and the response is the most agile. The scene is too simple, it will make the user feel false, and the complex and realistic scene will inevitably increase the difficulty of interaction and affect the real-time. This technology mainly makes the user completely immersed in the scene, the user’s perspective is realized by turning the head, and the adjustment of the distance of the viewing angle can be realized by the keyboard direction key, so that the user is immersive. This kind of perspective is very similar to the angle of view of the UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle). When looking at the Western House in mid-air, the advantages and disadvantages of this perspective are obvious. The advantage is that you can see the whole picture, have a certain understanding of the appearance of each part, and even close the place to attract yourself, but the disadvantage is that the experience is not good enough. Since people usually get used to keeping the line of sight and the height of the ground consistent with the height of the human eye corresponding to the ground, this can give a stronger sense of reality in the scene experience, just like walking in the scene, the experience brought by the difference in perspective is different. This fully demonstrates that when a player plays a majority of role-playing games, he usually views the overall scene from a top-down perspective, and then focuses on the role played, so that the entire game screen presents the entire scene according to the perspective of the character or the perspective of the character’s height, thereby giving the player a more realistic game experience (Fig. 8).

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Urban landscape generation strategy based on human-computer interaction

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Secondly, the generation of urban landscape based on human-computer interaction. The generation of urban landscape based on human-computer interaction can be analyzed from three aspects: theme expansion design, use of digital technology equipment, and application of digital technology, as shown in Fig. 9. In the first place, theme development design. This design is reflected in the display of a large amount of additional information in the virtual landscape, taking the virtual landscape design of Nanjing Ming Dynasty City Wall as an example, which shows a series of information related to this theme. For example, the city wall is based on the Nanjing Ming Dynasty City bricks, which is of great artistic value and historical value. The brickwork embodies the history of Chinese ancient bricks, and the masonry and brick structure have important research value, and also it condenses the heavy history in every brick of Ming Dynasty City. In order to facilitate the virtual reality to more accurately present the brick effect, the text information of the city brick is more clearly presented by the scanning of the city wall information and the generation of the digital model by means of the three-dimensional scanning instrument, so that the complete historical information of the Ming City Wall can be better displayed. In addition, using three-dimensional scanning and display, the context information and related historical elements of other historical relics in Nanjing are more fully displayed. In the next place, the use of digital technology equipment is mainly applied to the presentation of virtual reality technology solutions. The hardware facilities that are more common in the application object are virtual reality helmets. HTC VIVE is representative. Users can change the virtual landscape by operating the handle. The viewing angle of the whole screen can be adjusted by rotating the head, and the highly free virtual landscape roaming experience can better meet the user’s need for experiential, interactive and immersive virtual landscape scenes. Again, the use of digital technology requires Unity 3D software to implement the urban landscape of virtual reality technology. Unity 3D software has powerful digital model placement capability and convenient operation. The basic working principle of this concept experimental design is that the first step is to prepare the software programming to generate the digital model roaming package; the second step is to put the model in the package; the third step is to adjust the model with Unity 3D. After completing the above operation process, the virtual city landscape file can be presented by reading the virtual reality hardware device. In addition, a major feature of the virtual landscape is the presentation of diverse images, which is reflected in the process of generating virtual landscapes using developer virtual reality devices (Fig. 9).

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Urban landscape generation based on human-machine interaction

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4.3 Prospects for Human-Computer Interaction in Urban Landscape Design

Kevin Kelly, the founding editor of Wired magazine, wrote in Wired that the human-computer interaction technology will produce the next large technology platform: Mirrorworld. Kevin Kelly predicted that the future of the mirrored world will fundamentally change people’s lives.

What is the mirror world? The word mirror was originally promoted by Yale University computer scientist David Gelernter. Objects in the mirrored world not only have the appearance of real things, but also the background, meaning and function of things. We can interact with it, manipulate it, and experience it, just as we do in the real world. The mirrored world will fundamentally change people’s lives like the Internet and social media. And this virtual and reality world will eventually be as big as the planet we live in.

In the mirror world, we will be able to search the physical space like searching for text, for example, to help you find “all park benches that can see the sunrise. “We will be able to hyperlink specific objects to a physical network, just like a network hyperlink to a word. All real objects will have a digital twin brother. The development of the mirror world is much faster than we think. Wayfair’s “Online Home Product Catalog”, a homeware retailer, shows tens of thousands of products, but not all photos are taken in a photo studio. Instead, Wayfair found that creating a three-dimensional computer model for each item is much cheaper. You have to look at every picture on the Wayfair website very carefully to see if it is a virtual object model.

The mirror world is already under development, and although the mirror world is not yet fully existed, it is coming. In the near future, our landscape architects will digitally design in virtual reality space, every place and every thing in the real world, such as every street, every lamp post, every building, every A room will have a full-size digital view in the mirrored world. The mirror world will become the third epoch-making technology platform in the history of the Internet. The first large-scale technology platform is the Internet, which digitizes information and influences knowledge by algorithms. The second largest platform is social media, which is mainly operated on mobile phones, digitizing humans, and subjecting human behavior and relationships to the power of algorithms.

We are currently at the dawn of the third platform, which will digitize all regions of the world. On this platform, everything and territory will be machine readable, and everything will be affected by the algorithm. It takes at least 10 years for the mirrored world to grow to the point where it can be used by millions of people, and it will take decades to mature (Fig. 10).

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Mnirror age of big data collection platform

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5 Conclusions

The design of the virtual landscape is more suitable for the reflection of the contemporary landscape from the aspects of technical means, process, regularity and essence. The reason is as follows. First, through the multi-dimensional and development perspective, more types of architectural forms can be digitally designed to facilitate people’s understanding and understanding of contemporary landscapes. Second, the contemporary landscape has many design features, and its research involves multidisciplinary theory and method research. Therefore, the design of contemporary landscape by virtual reality technology is an inevitable requirement for exploring the essence, regularity and procedural nature of virtual landscape. Besides, the human-computer interaction urban landscape is different from the traditional landscape design method, and there are differences between the practice mode and the theoretical system in the two design methods. The former can create highly creative ideas and practical cases by adopting digital technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality in landscape form, landscape function, human-computer interaction, etc. The information elements of virtual landscapes can be obtained through a series of scientific means such as drones, GPS, and 3D scanning. Compared with the traditional landscape and human-computer interaction landscape, the latter pays more attention to the use of modern digital technology, and designers can carry out more extensive creations in landscape forms, functions, human-machine relationships, and even landscapes can be better applied based on the unique expression of the user’s re-creation landscape. The rethinking and reflection on urban landscape design has benefited from the new landscape and user relationship and the new urban landscape design thinking mode. With the advent of digital information era, facing the characteristics of contemporary society and contemporary life, designers should adopt coping strategies and expressions that can solve practical problems and challenges. In the new era of environmental art design, the introduction of “interactive design” thinking, from human experience, human and environmental communication as a starting point, the use of new technologies, new materials to create an unusual environmental art and diversified living space. Mutual design emphasizes the usability and user experience of the design ideas make it more advantageous in the future environmental art design, interactive design is a concern about human nature, people-oriented products. This may become the future research hotspot, will also promote the development of China’s environmental art design to a certain extent.