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Makerspaces are gaining popularity in the educational activities of all age groups, from primary schools to higher education institutions, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Due to makerspaces’ hands-on learning approach, it is generally believed that learning in makerspaces influences students’ creative and thinking skills. Experiments have been performed to explore this relationship; however, they are limited to a particular type of makerspace and address only some aspects of creativity. Therefore, using a systematic literature review (SLR) approach, we attempted to understand the relationship between makerspaces and creativity in the context of STEM education. The SLR offers a holistic view of makerspaces fostering four aspects of creativity from primary to higher education. This SLR used three primary categories of terms in its search string: (i) makerspace and associated terms, (ii) creativity and innovation, and (iii) variants of the term “STEM.” Using the Summon meta-database, we searched 103 digital databases (including Scopus, IEEE, and ASEE). The initial search considered peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles and conference proceedings focusing on STEM disciplines published from 2000 to August 2021. After following the PRISMA guidelines for reporting systematic reviews, 34 relevant papers remained eligible for inclusion. The selected papers were analyzed using thematic analysis. Various types of makerspaces show empirical evidence of fostering creativity. This review additionally identifies seven factors that foster creativity in a makerspace environment. These findings will be beneficial for applying makerspace tools and interventions to enhance creativity in the context of STEM disciplines.

Extensive research has focused on the relationship between culture and creativity. However, related studies typically adopt national cultural values, set countries as independent variables to explore the relationship between culture and individuals’ creativity, or have inconsistent conclusions. Therefore, this study attempted to explore this relationship at the individual level in design processes from a phenomenological perspective, based on two design tasks carried out by 27 students at a university in China. The results showed a positive association between pleasure and long-term versus short-term orientation of individual cultural values in the two creative methods – 6-3-5 and collaborative sketching (C-sketch) – which were statistically significant. However, the correlation between enlightenment and long-term versus short-term orientation only existed in the 6-3-5 method. Based on the analysis, we found that an individual’s educational level affected their self-evaluation in the experience of creativity, and the 6-3-5 method was more favorable than the C-sketch method for the participants. Moreover, we developed a visualization framework and explained the relationship between culture and creativity based on the componential theory of creativity and Hofstede’s culture theory. Furthermore, the study might serve as a groundwork for further examination of the relationship between individuals’ culture and their experience of creativity.

How to enhance creativity, especially by applying new technologies to creativity methods, is a question posed continuously by researchers. One reason for this is that creativity is an important part of people's daily lives and an essential component of society. Therefore, many methods to enhance creativity have been created, especially brainstorming, which is one of the most popular and effective tools that inspire individuals to generate ideas, hence enhancing creativity. Moreover, technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), provide an opportunity for individuals and groups to be creative. In response, recent studies have adopted VR in brainstorming to enhance creativity. However, there is a lack of systematic analysis of experimental approaches and creativity measures employed in this context. Addressing this question, this study categorized existing articles on the topic related to categories of avatars, environments, interfaces, or applications. The findings elaborate on trends, measures employed to evaluate creativity and idea generation, identified categories, and results of these studies.

Virtual Reality (VR) is progressively adopted at different stages of design and product development. Consequently, evolving interaction requirements in engineering design and development for VR are essential for technology adoption. One of these requirements is real-time positional tracking. This paper aims to present an experimental design of a new real-time positional tracking device (tracker), that is more compact than the existing solution, while addressing factors such as wearability and connectivity. We compare the simulation of the proposed device and the existing solution, discuss the results, and the limitations. The new experimental shape of the device is tailored towards research, allowing the engineering designer to take advantage of a new tracker alternative in new ways, and opens the door to new VR applications in research and product development.

Prototyping is an essential activity in the early stages of product development. This activity can provide insight into the learning process that takes place during the implementation of an idea. It can also help to improve the design of a product. This information and the process are useful in design education as they can be used to enhance students' ability to prototype their ideas and develop creative solutions. To observe the activity of prototype development, we conducted a study on students participating in a 7-week course: Principles of Digital Fabrication. During the course, eight teams made prototypes and shared their weekly developments via internet blog posts. The posts contained prototype pictures, descriptions of their ideas, and reflections on activities. The blog documentation of the prototypes developed by the students was done without the researchers' intervention, providing essential data or research. Based on a review of other methods of capturing the prototype development process, we compare existing documentation tools with the method used in the case study and outline the practices and tools related to the effective documentation of prototyping activity.

English: This study proposed a fundamental technique for evaluating the preferences of interior space users by capturing their verbally expressed preferences and then determining word associations. To accomplish this, the Pajek visualization software for large network analysis was employed in conjunction with the USF Word Association dictionary to visualize the structures and network depths of the derived associative meanings. The generated associative words were then qualitatively categorized into taxonomic word groups to reveal 13 dimensions of perceived interior-environmental quality, as follows: House-related, Territorial, Impression, Activity, Active Element of Nature, Nature, Building Materials, Companion, Household Basics, Color, Location, Composition, and Time Period. A factor analysis was then conducted to sort the generated associative words according to Out-Degree Centrality/ODC score. These were validated into five factors that appeared to influence the comfort levels of interior space users. These five factors and 13 dimensions are useful as objective bases for determining the composition of adjectival pairs through the Semantic Differential (SD) method, which helps designers and architects evaluate interior space preferences.\ud \ud Indonesian: Penelitian ini menggunakan teknik fundamental untuk melakukan evaluasi terhadap preferensi ekspresi verbal pengguna ruang interior dengan cara menghimpun kata-kata asosiatif kesan mendalam pengguna (user's in-depth impression). Peneliti menggunakan perangkat lunak visualisasi Pajek untuk analisis data jaringan yang sangat besar yang dibantu dengan penggunaan kamus USF Word Association; perangkat lunak dan kamus ini digunakan untuk memvisualisasikan struktur dan kedalaman jaringan makna asosiatif yang terbentuk. Hasil pengumpulan kata-kata asosiatif kemudian dikelompokkan secara kualitatif berdasarkan pengelompokan taksonomi kata menjadi 13 dimensi kualitas lingkungan-interior berdasarkan persepsi: Terkait rumah (Housedengan menggunakan analisis faktor, sejumlah kata terpilih yang memiliki nilai sebaran kata asosiatif yang tinggi (Out-Degree Centrality/ODC score) divalidasi menjadi 5 faktor yang berpengaruh terhadap kenyamanan pengguna ruang interior. Hasilnya, 5 Faktor dan 13 Dimensi ini menjadi dasar yang objektif dalam menentukan komposisi pasangan kata adjektif pada Semantic Differential method (SD) yang dapat membantu desainer/arsitek mengevaluasi preferensi pengguna ruang interior. Kata Kunci: dimensi spasial interior, kenyamanan pengguna, konsep asosiatif, analisis jaringan.

The analysis of conversations during design activity can facilitate deeper insights into design thinking and its relation to creativity. A semantic analysis approach was employed to explore the sem...

Design education utilising digital fabrication is characterised by a dynamic project-based learning environment in which ideas are embodied in prototypes. This environment affects the way design and fabrication activities are taught, including sustainability considerations in the process and the outcomes. With the objectives of refining the sustainability indicators in the context of digital fabrication design education and identifying educational interventions for improving sustainability, we analyse the processes and outcomes of a digital fabrication course. We further develop a conceptual framework for sustainable prototyping based on the prototyping and testing stages in the design thinking model. The sustainability considerations in the prototyping process and outcomes in the design education context in FabLab are exemplified. The findings will help enhance sustainability and develop interventions in the context of design education.

In less than a quarter, the time between two consecutive issues of IJDCI, the COVID-19 outbreak has suddenly revolutionized the life of almost every human being. The daily reports by the World Heal...

To objectively and quantitatively study transcribed protocols of design problem solving conversations, we propose a semantic analysis approach based on dynamic semantic networks of nouns constructed with WordNet 3.1 lexical database. We examined the applicability of the semantic approach focused on a dynamic evaluation of the design problem solving process in educational settings. Using a case of real- world design problem-solving conversations, we show that the approach is able to determine the time dynamics of semantic factors such as level of abstraction, polysemy or information content, and quantify convergence/divergence of semantic similarity in design conversations between students, instructors and real clients. The approach can also be used to evaluate the aforementioned semantic factors for successful and unsuccessful ideas generated in the process of design problem solving, or to assess the effect of external feedback on the developed design solution. The proposed semantic analysis approach allows fast computation of the semantic factors in real time thereby demavonstrating a potential for both monitoring and support of the design problem solving process.

Analysing verbal data produced during the design activity is helpful to gain a better understanding of design creativity. To understand exchange of information in terms of creative outcomes, a semantic analysis approach was used to measure the semantic content of communications between students and teachers. The goal was to use this tool to analyse design conversations, and to investigate their relation to design creativity, assessed in terms of originality, usability, feasibility, aesthetics, elaboration, overall value and overall creativity. Abstraction, Polysemy, Information Content and Semantic Similarity were employed to explore 35 design conversations from the DTRS10 dataset. Main findings suggest that a significant relationship exists between Information Content and Originality, and between Information Content and Overall creativity of the produced design outcomes. Significant relations were also found between Abstraction, Polysemy, Information Content, and Feasibility, as well as between Semantic Similarity and Overall Value of the outcomes. Implications for the use of semantic measures for encouraging creativity in the design studio are discussed.

The early (pre-requirement) stages of product development can provide relevant insights into the creative design process. At these stages, the communication of ideas during the prototyping process can serve as a rich source for information. In this paper, we attempt to document physical prototypes generated during the design process. We describe the design and preliminary testing of Protobooth Oulu: a system that can be used for documenting the process of prototyping products through capturing process output 'snapshots' in time at the early stages of product development. Our primary motivation is to facilitate documentation and reflection from an educational perspective. We tested the system during a course on digital fabrication in a FabLab environment, where ten teams documented their coursework over the course of six weeks. Managing to capture prototypes over time, analysis of the captured data showed evolution and major changes in the prototypes. Such data can be used for understanding the process of prototyping and consequently provide means to improve prototype and overall creative performance. We outline a future Protobooth system in terms of functionality.

Maker and DIY communities are constantly sharing tutorials, projects documentation, as well as design sketches and model files. Producing documentation of good quality has its challenges, one of them being the amount of time needed to generate it. In this paper, we present a software tool that assists makers and hobbyists in creating reports and tutorials of their projects on-the-go, that is, at the same time they are working on them. A mobile phone application allows taking pictures, grouping them and annotating them with text and audio. All the material collected during the making activity is automatically stored online and presented in a website created for the project. The maker can later modify this site by means of adding additional text, reordering the pictures, or including extra multimedia content or design files. This tool is specially tailored to the documentation needs of the Fab Lab network.

As the silicon photonics field matures and a data-hungry future looms ahead, new technologies are required to keep up pace with the increase in capacity demand. In this paper, we review current developments in the near-IR and mid-IR group IV photonic modulators that show promising performance. We analyse recent trends in optical and electrical co-integration of modulators and drivers enabling modulation data rates of 112 GBaud in the near infrared. We then describe new developments in short wave infrared spectrum modulators such as employing more spectrally efficient PAM-4 coding schemes for modulations up to 40 GBaud. Finally, we review recent results at the mid infrared spectrum and application of the thermo-optic effect for modulation as well as the emergence of new platforms based on germanium to tackle the challenges of modulating light in the long wave infrared spectrum up to 10.7 μm with data rates of 225 MBaud.

Human creativity generates novel ideas to solve real-world problems. This thereby grants us the power to transform the surrounding world and extend our human attributes beyond what is currently possible. Creative ideas are not just new and unexpected, but are also successful in providing solutions that are useful, efficient and valuable. Thus, creativity optimizes the use of available resources and increases wealth. The origin of human creativity, however, is poorly understood, and semantic measures that could predict the success of generated ideas are currently unknown. Here, we analyze a dataset of design problem-solving conversations in real-world settings by using 49 semantic measures based on WordNet 3.1 and demonstrate that a divergence of semantic similarity, an increased information content, and a decreased polysemy predict the success of generated ideas. The first feedback from clients also enhances information content and leads to a divergence of successful ideas in creative problem solving. These results advance cognitive science by identifying real-world processes in human problem solving that are relevant to the success of produced solutions and provide tools for real-time monitoring of problem solving, student training and skill acquisition. A selected subset of information content (IC S\'anchez-Batet) and semantic similarity (Lin/S\'anchez-Batet) measures, which are both statistically powerful and computationally fast, could support the development of technologies for computer-assisted enhancements of human creativity or for the implementation of creativity in machines endowed with general artificial intelligence., Comment: 42 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables

The extent to which designers can understand users often determines the quality of design outcomes. A deep understanding of users allows the designers to focus on the right problem and make optimal design decisions, which encouraged designers to empathize with users. However, the current imagination-based empathizing strategy appears to be too susceptible to their previous experience and knowledge, which has been questioned concerning effectiveness and accuracy. On the other hand, Virtual Reality (VR) technology provides an opportunity for designers to gain experience-driven empathy by immersing them in a virtual environment that mimics the users' surroundings as if they are seeing the world from users' eyes. While abundant studies covered empathy VR and empathy for design, limited attention has been paid to the chance of bringing VR, empathy, and design research together. Addressing this gap, this study explored literature across domains, identified major concerns about this approach, synthesized the evidence, and discussed the feasibility and validity of the VR-based empathic design research approach.

Our access to computer-generated worlds changes the way we feel, how we think, and how we solve problems. In this review, we explore the utility of different types of virtual reality, immersive or non-immersive, for providing controllable, safe environments that enable individual training, neurorehabilitation, or even replacement of lost functions. The neurobiological effects of virtual reality on neuronal plasticity have been shown to result in increased cortical gray matter volumes, higher concentration of electroencephalographic beta-waves, and enhanced cognitive performance. Clinical application of virtual reality is aided by innovative brain–computer interfaces, which allow direct tapping into the electric activity generated by different brain cortical areas for precise voluntary control of connected robotic devices. Virtual reality is also valuable to healthy individuals as a narrative medium for redesigning their individual stories in an integrative process of self-improvement and personal development. Future upgrades of virtual reality-based technologies promise to help humans transcend the limitations of their biological bodies and augment their capacity to mold physical reality to better meet the needs of a globalized world.

Fabrication laboratories (FabLabs) and makerspaces are used to transform ideas into tangible products. Used in a design–learning context, they can enhance cognitive and creative skills. Creativity is the pivotal ability to produce innovative outcomes in makerspaces, and several studies have attempted to understand the role of makerspaces and creativity in specific fields. However, a comprehensive study offering a holistic view of the contributions of the makerspaces as built environments that foster creativity is lacking. Therefore, we conducted a systematic literature review on FabLabs, makerspaces, and creativity to address this research gap. While the review was performed using five major databases, only peer reviewed journal articles were considered. The findings revealed that makerspaces help to develop person, product, physical, and social environments, as well as process aspects of creativity. Moreover, makerspaces induce problem solving, collaborative, and communication skills; they also offer appealing environments and technologies for developing creative solutions to real-life problems. We identified and analysed five major themes dealing with technical skills, technological and environmental elements, STEM learning, and skill development, and elaborated upon their importance for enhancing creativity in FabLab and makerspace environments.

Energy efficient personal transportation requires fuel-efficient and route aware driving. Driving coaching systems can provide to drivers all the information and guidance that is needed to learn these skills. However, persuading drivers to change their driving behaviour is a challenging task. The authors identify functional, design, safety, and persuasive features for systems supporting fuel-efficiency. Moreover, they analyse how these features are supported by state-of-the-art systems targeting reduced fuel consumption. Finally, based on their analysis, they discuss open issues and opportunities for future development of fuel-efficiency support systems. The literature and the reviewed research in this study illustrate the needs for overall situation assessment and benefits of careful and multifaceted approach for systems design when it comes to eco-driving: an effective system will make use of a versatile design toolkit in order to obtain enduring behavioural results.

Virtual reality (VR) technology has introduced a range of equipment, contexts, and stimuli with possible applications in the context of design creativity. In response, recent studies have investigated VR as a tool that can be applied to enhance creativity. As a part of such research, this paper reviews existing studies and provides a state-of-the-art literature review based on the componential theory of creativity. Based on studies that investigate the use VR to enhance creativity, we found that VR can be used to improve specific factors to enhance creativity, and a natural environment can be considered a positive factor for enhancing creativity. Therefore, we propose a hypothesis that VR technology could be a useful method to simulate nature for enhancing creativity; experimentation based on the hypothesis is expected to be conducted in the future.

Adopting immersive Virtual Reality (VR) technology in the early stages of design appeals to designers, as research has shown that immersing people in a virtual environment can efficiently elicit empathy and facilitate deeper understanding of out-group members. However, after exploring and synthesis literature across the fields of design, psychology, and neuroscience, the present study found the opportunities VR opens to be accompanied by uncertainties. In this study, we (1) identified the benefits of adopting immersive VR in the early design stage, such as enhancing empathy and promoting design equity, (2) discovered previously unrealised problems that VR may bring to the design process, especially potential biases owing to emotional connections, and (3) determined a future direction for relevant research: gaining deeper knowledge about operators’ mental activities to mitigate biases and uncertainties.

The paper presents the application of non-specialized lexical database and semantic metrics on transcripts of co-design protocols. Three different and previously analyzed design protocols of co-creative sessions in the field of packaging design, carried out with different supporting tools, are used as test-bench to highlight the potential of this approach. The results show that metrics about the Information Content and the Similarity maps with sufficient precision the differences between ICT- and non-ICT-supported sessions so that it is possible to envision future refinement of the approach.

Design fixation refers to the designers’ inability to avoid becoming stuck with preexisting ideas in order to generate new ones. With the recent fast advancements and developments, XR has emerged as a powerful promising technology that can shed new light on this issue. Consequently, this paper aims at: (1) investigating the underlying mechanisms of design fixation as reported in literature; (2) exploring the state-of-art in the use of XR technology in design; and (3) identifying ways to mitigate design fixation by employing XR technology.

In this study, we formulate a framework to evaluate open-ended projects related to digital fabrication. The framework consists of two dimensions, i.e. human intellect and technology. Human intellect is judged by three sub-dimensions – creativity, computational thinking, and skills. In order to study the technology dimension, the four sub-dimensions include process, outcome, development stage, and reproducibility. To test the proposed framework, a case study was applied on digital fabrication projects done in Fab Academy 2019. Final projects of students are selected to implement the framework since final projects exemplify most of the skills learned by a student of the digital fabrication course. In addition, the proposed framework is also assessed in the light of existing literature done to evaluate learning in similar types of projects. The results establish the relationship among different sub parameters of human intellect and technology, and present the open-ended project evaluation results.

The analysis of conversations maintained during the design activity can help to gain a better insight into design thinking and its relation to creativity. A semantic analysis approach was employed to inspect the content of communications and information exchange between students and instructors. The goal was to explore design conversations in terms of Abstraction, Polysemy, Information Content and Semantic Similarity measures, and analyse their relation to the creativity of final design outcomes. These were assessed according to their Originality, Usability, Feasibility, Overall Value and Overall Creativity. To this end, design conversations from the 10th Design Thinking Research Symposium (DTRS10) dataset were used. Main results show a significant relationship between Information Content and Originality and Overall Creativity. For instructors, Semantic measures were mainly related to Feasibility, whereas for students the focus was set on the Overall Value of the final solutions.

Virtual Reality is used in various ways for creating a storytelling experience. It gives us the opportunity to imagine one&rsquo, s life events as a story, and in settings that are intended to aid the self, such as treatment of trauma, anxiety, phobia, etc. This paper discusses the ways that challenging experiences change the way people perceive their life narratives and form their memories. This paper suggests that virtual reality (VR) can be used for the exploration of alternative scenarios in order to see one&rsquo, s overall line of life in a new and healthier way. Considering the theoretical background of the narrative self, this research proposes a novel view of VR immersion as a medium for constructing a new storyline and attitude to the past. The approach would also influence attitudes regarding the present and future, and thus better shape the narrative of the self, which can lead to healthier life experiences.

Maker educations and distributed educations are increasing in quantity and quality. This gives a possibility for academia to tap into interesting sources of knowledge outside the physical parameters of the institution, as well as outside formal education and traditional learning methods. However, academic recognition of such learning can be challenging. We explore Fab Academy in comparison with a current university course with the same topic; the amount of work by university standards and whether the assessment methods of Fab Academy are sufficient for academic recognition. The workload of Fab Academy is calculated based on the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS). The contents are compared based on the range of subjects and the deliverables required to pass the courses. We find Fab Academy to be compatible with the university course. Hence, we consider it possible to include in university curriculum Fab Academy content accredited by different universities.

The aim of this study is to investigate the drivers of physical realization of meaningful objects, in particular, how these drivers can contribute to prototyping of products. An intensive digital fabrication workshop, a part of a summer school, is used as a case study. We discuss the results of the workshop in terms of the background of the participants and their motivation in the perspective of the rationale of their prototypes. We identify how the background and motivation of teams of the participants influenced the meaning making in digitally fabricated prototypes.

The research object of this study is the in-depth discourse on the sustainability transfer activities of higher education institutions (HEIs) and their contribution to a regional sustainable transformation. For this purpose, a heuristically-derived concept of sustainability transfer is empirically tested with a mixed-methods approach based on the example of Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development (HNEE). The empirical findings demonstrate that the realization of sustainability transfer depends mainly on the personal initiative of teachers and researchers. Major barriers are a lack of time and financial resources. The observed concept of sustainability transfer is applicable to all study and research areas of HNEE. Involvement in sustainability transfer can include the whole of society, from politics, enterprises, and civil society to education and research institutions. Overall, the empirical testing of the concept offered by this study illustrates its practical suitability to capturing specifically those sustainability transfer activities that are not tapped by third mission approaches. This opens up a novel dimension for transfer potential at universities and their role in regional sustainability transformation. It also highlights that the interdependencies between HEIs and practitioners need to be more contextualized with quality criteria such as the value of the transfer performance or level of ambition.

In this study, we discuss a structure for developing the skills and competencies required by the learning framework of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for future education. Given the broad range of skills and the numerous competencies required to meet the demands of future society, the proposed wider and higher-level framework is based on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and design, and mathematics) and addresses the limitations of conventional computational thinking by tackling some of the skills and competencies. This is done by proposing the enrichment of STEAM educational approach with art thinking, which may be defined as a creative human-centred discovery process. To explore such enrichment, we conducted a workshop on art thinking. The motivation of the workshop was to explore whether art thinking can overcome some of the limitations of computational thinking regarding future education in the OECD learning framework. We discuss STEAM as focusing on design creativity competency, and we outline the development of educational activities such as workshops to promote competencies in the perspective of OECD framework.

We discuss the design and initial evaluation of Gravity of Thought Waterfall, which is designed to be a surprising and creative prototype. Users can control the visual "gravity" effect of the waterfall with an EEG headset. The potentially surprising interactions with the prototype are evaluated through a set of questionnaires and a survey. Results show that the designed prototype is perceived to be surprising and creative; almost all participants were positively surprised when interacting with it.

Die im vorliegenden Aufsatz beschriebenen Prozesssteuerungswerkzeuge und Entscheidungshilfsmittel fur die ressourceneffiziente Sanierung zwecks energetischer und komforttechnischer Optimierung von Mehrfamilienwohngebauden und unter anderem historisch und baukulturell wertvollen Bauten, die von Wohnungseigentumergemeinschaften betrieben werden, sind fur ein breites Spektrum relevanter Beteiligter entwickelt: WEG-Verwalter, Verwaltungsbeirate, Energieberater und Kummerer.

Nowadays, we have plenty of channels where to share thoughts, experiences, ambitions, but most of these channels turn out to be ephemeral and evanescent. On the contrary, we believe that thoughts o...

Advances in virtual reality present opportunities to relive experiences in an immersive medium that can change the way we perceive our life stories, potentially shaping our realities for the better. This paper studies the role of virtual reality as a tool for the creation of stories with the concept of the self as a narrator and the life of the self as a storyline. The basis of the study is the philosophical notion of the self-narrative as an explanatory story of the events in one&rsquo, s life that constitutes the notion of one&rsquo, s self. This application is suitable for cases when individuals need to recreate their self, such as during recovery after traumatic events. The analysis of the effects of virtual reality shows that it enables a person to engage in a process of deeper self-observation to understand and explain adverse events and to give meaning to these events to form a new story, which can complement the therapeutic outcomes of exposure treatments. This study proposes concrete examples of immersive scenarios used to reconstruct personal stories. Several possible levels of experience are proposed to suggest that recovery can be achieved through the gradual retelling of the self-narrative, addressing all of the underlying narratives. Considering the ethical challenges that might arise, this paper explores the ways in which immersion in virtual reality can benefit a person&rsquo, s view toward life as a story and his or her self as its author, comparing this idea with previous research on the application of virtual reality for trauma treatment. The analysis also emphasizes the perception of narrative authorship in virtual reality as an essential method for recovering the self-narrative and improving a patient&rsquo, s mental health during self-actualization.

Here we propose an interactive system to augment creative design thinking using networks of concepts in a virtual reality environment. We discuss how to augment the human capacity to be creative through dynamic suggestions providing new and original ideas, based on specific semantic network characteristics. We outline directions to explore the structures of the concept network and their connection to creative concept generation. It is expected that augmented creative thinking will allow the user to have more original ideas and thus be more innovative.

Digital fabrication laboratories (FabLabs) influence how we think, ideate, do, make, and create. To enable the full capacity of materialization of the most creative ideas in the FabLab, a fundamental understanding of the processes in the FabLab is required. To accomplish this, we propose a framework for dynamically and ubiquitously capturing human-human (team) interactions, human-tool/machine interactions, and human-design-object interactions in the complex scenarios that occur in the paradigm of making in FabLabs. The framework elaborates three methods. The first method produces categories of creative spaces about activities and users in the FabLab. The second method identifies interactions between users and tools, and between users. Last, the third method identifies in-depth cognitive and thinking types of makers in the FabLab. The proposed framework can improve creative results and experiences of all stakeholders in the making process in the FabLab, and provide easy customization of the FabLab training for different audiences.

In this research, we studied the human dimensions of experience and knowledge, confidence, motivation, and fun with regard to four technological dimensions referring to a FabLab environment: 2D and 3D design, tools and machines, prototyping with electronics, and programming. An intensive, two-week training period for high school students in digital fabrication and design was utilized as a testbed to evaluate how the participants modified their perception of the four human dimensions during the training. We identified that prototyping with electronics and programming were the most significant obstacles. In addition, the perception of acquired knowledge and confidence had increased considerably after training except for the programming domain. FabLab trainers can utilize the trainees’ perceptions on different dimensions to emphasize the specific design aspects of the activity in order to achieve the training goals. We also expect that a detailed description of the experiment setup can be useful to other researchers and practitioners while organizing activities at FabLab.

This paper focuses on tactile interactions with product materials to approach the essence of users’ interaction. We propose a framework for analysing tactile interactions based on users’ association-based in-depth impressions and interpretation-based created meanings. The aim of the study is to determine how in-depth impressions activate created meanings in tactile interaction and how they affect users’ preferences with regard to product materials. To detect and identify in-depth impressions and created meanings, this study applies original methods that analyse concept networks. To collect users’ freely expressed impressions and preferences, we conducted an experiment that involved seven material samples. The identified in-depth impressions and created meanings are connected with preference evaluations during a tactile interaction with product materials. According to the findings, the generation of fewer yet affect and abstraction-based in-depth impressions produces high-preference evaluations and gives rise to diverse created meanings with respect to a material. These findings should contribute to designs that lead users to form emotional bonds and gain meaningful experiences with products.