The influence of virtual reality on design process creativity in basic design studios

ABSTRACT

With the recent advancements in digital technologies, the design studios are transformed to virtual environments that offer both to design students and instructors a broader perspective in understanding the design process. As an integral part of design process, the supporting virtual tools enhance creativity in basic design studios. This study examines the influence of immersive and non-immersive virtual design environments on design process creativity in the first year basic design studio, through observing the factors related to creativity as the flow state and motivation. Consequently, an experiment is conducted to investigate the relationships between spatial ability, flow state and motivation in immersive and non-immersive virtual design environments. Forty-two first-year undergraduate basic design students participated in the experiment. The data analysis demonstrated that the immersive virtual design environment facilitates participants’ design process creativity more than the non-immersive one. Also, the findings indicated a positive strong correlation between motivations and flow state and a positive weak correlation between spatial ability and flow state. Study results contributed to a greater understanding of implementing immersive virtual reality as a creativity supporting tool.

KEYWORDS:

• Creativity
• digital educational technologies
• flow state
• motivation
• spatial ability
• virtual reality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Samah Obeid

Samah Obeid is a PhD candidate at the Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design, I. D. Bilkent University. Her research focuses on creativity and virtual reality applications for design.

Halime Demirkan

Halime Demirkan is a Professor of Architecture at the Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design and the Director of the Graduate School of Economics and Social Sciences at I. D. Bilkent University. Her current research interests include creativity, design education, and human–computer interaction.