Establishing creative-friendly space for design thinking in shared virtual reality in tertiary design education

Abstract

This paper aims at reviewing the major components of establishing a creative-friendly space in shared virtual reality for facilitating students’ design thinking in tertiary design education. One of the important ingredients is creating environmental stimulation for creativity enhancement. As Green (1974) states that design education is fundamentally influenced by environment not only the hardware but also the senses of sight, sound, taste and touch. In shared virtual reality, the platform provides a learning community with various learning activities and stimulation. In this paper, various topics will be discussed for providing the underlying principles in establishing creative-friendly virtual learning environment. Emphasis is placed on (1) the environmental factors in design thinking and creativity; (2) issues of socio-cultural environment as a stimulus of creative minds; (3) How an environment serves as stimulus and information provider for design study; (4) how to create a heuristic shared virtual space for design thinking; and (5) the basic principles of establishing shared virtual environment for facilitating design thinking.