Natural elements in the designer's work environment influence the creativity of their results

Abstract

It has been shown that the environment can determine the outcome of work that is carried out in it. Several studies have confirmed that an environment with natural elements can have beneficial effects on people's physical and psychological health and also improve their creativity. However, little research has addressed this effect on the creativity of design engineers within the specific context of processes involving the design of new products.The main purpose of this paper is to determine whether product design proposals developed in environments containing natural elements show higher creativity factors/parameters/values than those obtained in other environments. The results will also be compared according to whether the natural environment is real or simulated. To this end, an experiment was conducted in which designers in the final phase of their training worked in different environments to develop design concepts, which were then evaluated according to four creativity parameters. The analysis of the results suggests that environments that include natural elements, whether real or artificial, favour the creativity of the conceptual proposals for new products to a greater extent than environments without any natural elements. The conclusions of this research can help civil engineers and architects redesign design studios and workspaces, in order to improve the creativity of design engineers and the originality of their work.