Creative activities in Virtual Environmental Spaces – CREATIVENESS

The project was composed of experimental studies. Each line of work was concerned with analysis of the creative process, analysis of the quality of teamwork, and analysis of the level of creative productions. Three aspects of virtual worlds were examined: (1) the characteristics of the “physical” context, (2) self perception and identity, and (3) group dynamics and collaborative interactions. Each axis included several experiments in which Second Life was used to manipulate the characteristics of the work environment. The general approach of the experiments was to compare the work of participant groups in two different conditions, one taking full advantage of one aspect of MUVE functionalities to help creativity, and one in which the virtual world mirrors a “basic” real-world situation of creative collaboration. • In each study, the participants were invited to work on a project in a group of 3 persons. Each person, being placed in an isolated experimental box, had a limited time to communicate his/her idea to other fellow group member via computer. On the computer screen, each participant was presented via an avatar, therefore each participant had a visual contact with other participant via his/her avatar. • • During the experiments, the number, quality, and time taken to propose ideas were recorded as measures of creativity production with the work session. Measures of creative processes and social interactions were gathered through the analysis of logs of each session. • In each experiment, participants' reactions to MUVE were examined, in terms of satisfaction, involvement, and barriers to using MUVE in real work meetings. •

There were three main results. First, virtual environments with creativity-related features (the “artists’ house”) led to more creative ideas than did neutral (normal meeting room) and low creativity (dark storage room) environments. Second, there was an effect of the avatars: When assigned “creative-looking” avatars, people showed more creative thinking compared to neutral avatars, or control participants who worked outside the virtual world. Third, it was found that avatars who work together in a virtual meeting room, with chat-based interactions show a satisfactory degree of “feeling others’ presence’, and show good levels of creative productivity compared to avatars who “talk” with participant’s voices or control conditions of interaction in a real meeting room (non-virtual condition).

The applications exist in education, industry, and general meeting contexts. 1. Pedagogical innovations will consist of using the virtual environment to favour collaborations between students engaged in different formations. Specific pedagogical methods could be developed and tested. 2. Industrial innovations To remain competitive, companies must regularly offer new products to consumers. The identification of conditions that favour creativity, based on experimental results obtained during the CREATIVENESS project, will allow designers, engineers and ergonomists working into companies to reach ideas that will contribute to innovations. 3. Improvements of physical environments in professional contexts Another way of favouring professional creative activities into companies will consist in exploiting results about the effects of physical characteristics of the virtual environment on both creativity and collaborations. The results of the experimental studies will be used to improve rooms or offices and, therefore, to modify physical characteristics of the real world environment to favour professional creative activities. 4. Improvements of meetings organized by consultants in creativity Consultants in creativity regularly organize meetings for enhancing creativity in professional areas, Thus, modalities of communication and animation that will be identified as leading to the better performances will be used for improving the meetings organized by consultants in creativity. . 5. Generalization of meetings at a distance are common, such as using Skype. However, the functionalities offered by such tools are very limited. Creativeness project will allow us to propose specific functionalities that will be adapted to meeting at a distance. Moreover, these proposals will allow to favour both cognitive processes and collaborative activities, which are necessary in these new conditions of professional meetings.

There were several scientific publications,presentations in national and international congresses, and applications in businesses virtual meeting rooms as workspaces for creative meetings.

Internatioanl peer-reviewed articles:
• Bonnardel, N., Forens, M., & Lefevre, M. (2016). Enhancing collective creative design: An exploratory study on the influence of static and dynamic personas in a virtual environment. Design Journal, 19(2), 221-235. DOI : 10.1080/14606925.2016.1129145.
• Bourgeois-Bougrine, S., Buisine, S., Vandendriessche, C., Glaveanu, V., & Lubart, T. (2017). Engineering students’ use of creativity and development tools in conceptual product design: What, when and how? Thinking Skills and Creativity, 24,. 104-117.
• Buisine, S., Guegan, J., Barré, J., Segonds, F., & Aoussat, A. (2016). Using avatars to tailor ideation process to innovation strategy. Cognition, Technology & Work, 18, 583-594.
• Guegan, J., Buisine, S., Mantelet, F., Maranzana, N., & Segonds, F. (2016). Avatar-mediated creativity: When embodying inventors makes engineers more creative. Computers in Human Behavior, 61, 165-175.
• Guegan, J., Nelson, J., & Lubart, T. (2017) The relationship between contextual cues in virtual environments and creative processes. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 20(3), 202-206.
• Guegan, J., Segonds, F., Barré, J., Maranzana, N., Mantelet, F. & Buisine, S. (2017) Social identity cues to improve creativity and identification in face-to-face and virtual groups. Computers in Human Behavior, 77, 140-147.
• Thornhill-Miller, B. & Dupont, J-M. (2016). Virtual reality and the enhancement of creativity and innovation: Under recognized potential among converging technologies? Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology, 15(1), 102-121

National:
• Guegan, J., Buisine, S., & Collange, J. (2017). Effet Proteus et amorçage: Ces avatars qui nous influencent. Bulletin de Psychologie, 70(1), 3-15.

The objective of the project is to study the effects of using new digital collaborative environments such as Second Life on the processes and performances in collective creative problem solving tasks. The project will focus on three main determinants of performance: the environment, the person and the dynamics of the group. In particular, the following characteristics will be examined: (a) specific characteristics of a virtual world space (such as allowing an activity that is impossible in physical shared space, as well as the effect of physical details of the virtual environment that are analogous with the real world, such as wall color), (b) self presentation and social identity of participants (via avatars), and (c) communication and group dynamics.
The populations studied will be mainly students in psychology and engineering-design. Also, business students and non-student adults will participate. Creative problem solving concerning the societal domain of transportation in the future, with creative problem solving tasks adapted to each type of participant will be used (e.g., design new vehicles, improve travel safety, generate a public awareness campaign to foster the use of new transportation). Experimental studies will allow us to examine the effects of virtual environment features on creativity. Analyses will focus on the dynamics of the creative process, the quality and quantity of creative productions, and the quality and quantity of collaboration within each group or team. -