Supporting Creativity with Virtual Reality Technology

Abstract

AbstractThis contribution includes the development and validation of a Virtual Reality (VR) supported creativity technique: “Sensory Stimulus Environment Technique”. Key elements of this technique are the creativity process, a VR tool and the support of the tool (Virtual Creative Environments). The creativity process consists of phases for individual and group-based work. The VR tool “Virtual Creativity” includes functions to support the preparation of Virtual Creative Environments (VCE), the generation and evaluation of new ideas. For the generation of VCE, the tool possesses an environment configurator. Users of this function are supported by Design Rules for VCE.For the validation of the creativity technique, it was used in a product engineering project. The project members procedure two phases of the creativity process (Preparation and Individual Idea Generation) and used “Virtual Creativity” to generate VCEs and ideas to solve their tasks. By questionnaires, functions of “Virtual Creativity” were assessed for generating VCEs and ideas.