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

Creativity is an integral part of a design process. Recently, creativity supporting tools become very common in research. 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 factors related to creativity as the flow state and motivation. Consequently, an experiment was 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 joined the experiment. The data analysis demonstrated that the immersive virtual design environment facilitates participants’ design process creativity. Also, the findings indicated a positive weak correlation between spatial ability and flow state, and a positive strong correlation between motivation and flow state. Study results contributed to a greater understanding of implementing immersive virtual reality as a creativity supporting tool.