Natural elements in the designer's work environment influence the creativity of their results

Abstract

It has been shown that the environment can determine the outcome of work that is carried out in it. Several studies have confirmed that an environment with natural elements can have beneficial effects on people's physical and psychological health and also improve their creativity. However, little research has addressed this effect on the creativity of design engineers within the specific context of processes involving the design of new products. The main purpose of this paper is to determine whether product design proposals developed in environments containing natural elements show higher creativity factors/parameters/values than those obtained in other environments. The results will also be compared according to whether the natural environment is real or simulated. To this end, an experiment was conducted in which designers in the final phase of their training worked in different environments to develop design concepts, which were then evaluated according to four creativity parameters. The analysis of the results suggests that environments that include natural elements, whether real or artificial, favour the creativity of the conceptual proposals for new products to a greater extent than environments without any natural elements. The conclusions of this research can help civil engineers and architects redesign design studios and workspaces, in order to improve the creativity of design engineers and the originality of their work.

How the type of methodology used, when working in a natural environment, affects the designer's creativity

“…Thus, de Kort et al (2006) showed that significant levels of stress reduction could be achieved when people were subjected to immersive simulated natural environments and, similarly, (Kjellgren and Buhrkall 2010) showed that the same effect could be achieved with both natural environments and other settings in which the natural elements were simulated. Fewer works have studied the effect that real or simulated natural environments can have on designers' creativity, specifically during the process of designing new products, although some very recent studies offer clues that also point in a similar direction to the works mentioned above (Chulvi et al 2020;Batey et al 2021).…”

“…A. Both natural and artificial environments enhance creativity during the design phase, compared with a neutral environment, but it has not been tested with a specific design method (Chulvi et al 2020). B.…”

“…C. Intuitive and logical methods present differences between times devoted to each phase of the design process, and this distribution seems to be related with the creativity parameters of the results: more percentage of time devoted to PS drives to better novelty but worse utility results (Chulvi et al 2012b). Chulvi et al (2020) showed that environments that include natural elements, whether real or simulated, encourage creativity in conceptual proposals for new products to a greater extent than environments that contain no natural elements. In this work, an experience was performed in which the participants must solve different conceptual design problems in three different environments: real nature, simulated nature and neutral environment.…”

The relationship between personal intrinsic factors towards a design problem and the degree of novelty and circularity

“…The time available to solve each problem was established in 40 min, since it has been proved that the frequency of idea production, during the creative stage of design, is constant during the first 60 min (Howard et al 2008). Similar studies use times within the range of 30-60 min for this kind of conceptual problem-solving experiences, like the ones carried out by Chulvi et al (2020)…”

Análisis y medición conjunta del grado de circularidad y de novedad en la fase conceptual del diseño de productos

“…El tiempo disponible para resolver cada problema se estableció en 40 minutos, ya que se ha probado que la frecuencia de la producción de ideas, durante la etapa creativa del diseño, es constante durante los primeros 60 minutos (T. Howard et al, 2008). Estudios similares utilizan rangos de tiempo de entre 30 y 60 minutos para este tipo de experiencias de resolución conceptual de problemas, como los llevados a cabo por Chulvi, Agost, Felip, & Gual (2020) Así, los diseñadores noveles tuvieron que enfrentarse la etapa de resolución del problema de diseño, la cual consiste en actividades como la generación, evaluación y selección de la propuesta conceptual final para su futuro desarrollo (Blessing, 1994;Nidamarthi, Chakrabarti, & Bligh, 1997;Roozenburg & Eeckels, 1995). Durante este proceso, los participantes pudieron generar más de una alternativa para resolver el problema de diseño, pero al final de la experiencia, tuvieron que elegir una opción final, la que ellos consideraran que encajaba mejor con el problema propuesto.…”