The basis for developing future products in the automotive industry is finding creative and innovative solutions. Ideas can be found by means of creativity methods that support product developers throughout the creative process. Product developers are provided with a variety of different and new methods. This leads to a “method jungle” in which it is difficult for product developers to find the most suitable path. The successful use of methods in product development goes hand in hand with the acceptance and implementation of the methods. Despite the added value, only a low use is observed in the development process. The field of Creativity Support Tools also offers a wide variety of different tools that support the creativity process. Although a chasm exists between the many CSTs that are developed and what creative practitioners actually use. Therefore, previous studies iteratively developed a user-centered tool called “IDEA” that tries to provide a tool that responds to users' needs. The question arises how the developed tool IDEA performs in “real life setting” regarding its UX and usability as well as the creativity method acceptance and level of mental workload.

Many immersive approaches for design activities show a great potential for their specific use cases, but still overall usage of extended reality technology in product developers day-to-day work is little. The user's workflow between classical desktop work environment and its immersive counterpart is interrupted by both a data gap and an interface gap. The three-dimensional product data usually needs preparation and the user has to physically change the interface in use. The hybrid augmented reality computer workstation aims to close these gaps. A hologram of the current model is visualized next to the screen in reach of the user for intuitive inspection and spatial interactions. In this paper we present use cases for this novel immersive workstation in the CAD workflow. An explorative user study of the typical product designer`s workflow reveals the most common activities. Guided by those, eight uses cases are formulated and classified into fundamental, drafting, and modelling CAD tasks. These cases include novel hybrid augmented reality interactions derived from literature, which are assessed with respect to their applicability.

The term “creative space” describes a relatively recent phenomenon of innovative workplace design. Such creative workspaces are becoming popular in industry and academia. However, the impact of specific spatial design decisions on creativity and innovation is not yet fully understood. This paper provides an overview of state-of-the-art research on creative work and learning environments. We conducted a systematic literature search within the Scopus database and identified a total of 73 relevant sources discussing creative spaces within academic, practice, and other innovation environments. Among the included sources are 51 academic publications and 22 sources from company research and illustrative coffee-table books. We analyzed the sources using three lenses of interest: (1) the types of theoretical and practical contributions that are provided, (2) the spatial characteristics that are suggested to be beneficial for creativity and innovation, and (3) the discussed potential of new technologies for designing or researching creative spaces. The results provide in-depth insight into the current state of research on the topic of creative spaces. Practitioners, educators, and researchers can use the presented overview to investigate the possible impact of creative workspace design and identify research gaps that can be filled by conducting further research in the field.

This paper examines some aspects of physical-digital workspaces, focusing on multi-user, multi-touch technologies and how different workspaces impact collaboration. We introduce the concept of globally collaborative work. We chose to use case studies completed by groups of students in an engineering course to test different workspace modalities: the use of a large multi-touch table top in conjunction with a multi-touch board (vertical), the use of tablets with the multi-touch board, and finally the multi-touch board alone. The evaluation criteria are based on modes of interaction which emerge during globally collaborative work sessions: individual work, communication, coordination, cooperation and collaboration. We hypothesized that the workspaces would influence collaborative activity, expecting to see higher rates of collaboration in the table top environment than in the other two modalities studied. However, results showed less co-building and more cooperative work, as students divided their work and later attempted to negotiate a coherent product built on individual contributions. Lastly, we share a few design recommendations based on these results.

University incubators are an opportunity to promote the dissemination of research, change teaching practices and contribute to territorial economic development. In this article we present a structural and dynamic analysis of such an innovation system of a Swedish eco-innovation system by proposing elements for analysing the success of such innovation systems.

Creative workspaces are becoming popular in many organizations. They are believed to support innovation efforts and creativity among employees. This paper presents spatial evidences of creative work environments from real-life organizations, based on an exploratory multi-case study in 18 institutions. The found workspaces were mapped and categorized according to the qualities they might provide for affecting creativity. The resulting inventory of creative spaces contributes to the emerging interest on creative workspace design by presenting inspiring best-practice examples. The shown examples provide the readers with a better understanding how a creative space could be designed in order to provide an environment for an innovative organisation. Related literature was added to explain the possible impact of specific spatial configurations.

This paper provides an overview of the state-of-the-art research about creative work and learning environments. We conducted a systematic literature search within the Scopus database and identified a total of 70 relevant sources discussing creative spaces within academic, practice, or other innovation environments. Among the included sources are 48 academic publications and 22 sources from company research and illustrative coffee-table books that are discussed separately. We analyse the academic sources regarding their theoretical contribution, as well as regarding their scope. Finally, the included sources are categorized according to three areas of interest: (1) the addressed space types for different creative activities, (2) abstracted requirements for creative spaces, and (3) concrete characteristics and configurations of a creative space. The results provide an in-depth insight into the current state of research on the topic of creative spaces. Practitioners, educators, and researchers can use the presented overview to investigate the possible impact of creative workspace design and to identify research gaps for conducting further research in the field.