Interaction design studio learning in virtual worlds

Abstract

Abstract. The paper suggests that Virtual Worlds (VWs) have many unique advantages for supporting interaction design studio activities, provided that they are designed to include appropriate workplaces and interactive tools to foster collaboration and creativity. We present an approach for employing VWs that proposes the use of prospective tools and workplaces throughout the following key activities of interaction design studio courses: design brief, design thinking, design practice (conceptual and detailed), the desk crit, design review and user evaluation. Then, we describe a blended interaction design studio course on the basis of this approach, that ran through a whole semester. We found that the VW design studio is an engaging and constructive experience for students: in the VW environment students and tutors held many online meetings, and students constructed several models about their design project, they developed a digital prototype and conducted a remote usability evaluation. In addition the persistence of the environment and the developed VW tools helped students and tutors to achieve careful feedback and reflection during the design project lifetime. Nevertheless, a number of challenges remain for wider implementation: the refinement of the instructional design approach, the usability of VW tools, further integration of VWs to professional design tools, and the conduction of other full-scale VW design studio courses.

Online Collaboration in Design Education: an Experiment in Real‐Time Manipulation of Prototypes and Communication

“…In this sense, real‐time manipulation of design objects and prototypes may be a cause of reducing benefits of usages of various design modes in design processes. As Vosinakis & Koutsabasis () discovered, difficulties in collaboratively editing documents and drawing in online platforms could reduce design thinking activities. Another point the participants stated is that manipulation and communication is time‐consuming because of their unfamiliarity with the functions and increased tension caused from team members’ invisibility.…”

“…For example, some participants said they were reluctant to comment on a team member's prototype because they might misunderstand his/her design intention, had a fear of receiving negative feedback on their own work, or were unwilling freely to criticise others' suggestions and ideas because all comments are recorded, which causes a higher level of moral and social responsibility. This phenomenon was also seen in Vosinakis & Koutsabasis' (2013) virtual reality for an architecture and interior design course in which a process of design criticism is stressful for learners and entails a danger of excessive subjectivity.…”

“…The latter delivers experimental and empirical studies evaluating the effectiveness of a specific platform; a learning management system (e.g. Blackboard) for design course delivery (Park ), a collaborative design studio application facilitating asynchronous written communication (Sagun & Demirkan ), synchronous idea sharing in virtual reality (Vosinakis & Koutsabasis ), asynchronously stored, exchanged and manipulated information (Karakaya & Şenyapılı ). Yet, none of them offers real‐time manipulation of design objects and prototypes.…”

Fostering Team Creativity in Virtual Worlds

“…Virtual worlds offer such a shared three-dimensional place, where virtual team members can interact with each other while seeing the spatial positions and movements of others. This, together with the virtual world's multimodal communication, is likely to foster a sense of co-presence among virtual world users (Barrass & Barrass, 2006;Vosinakis & Koutsabasis, 2013).…”

The Mobile Visual Search Guiding System Based on SIFT

“…At the same time, the Bluetooth emitters, RFIP tags and other auxiliary devices are needed to be installed in Gallery. Not all the Galleries permit the install of these devices, so this design is limited to be used and popularized [2].…”