Identification of requirements for the transfer of creativity techniques in virtual environments by using TRIZ-Box

Distributed teams are becoming a normality in nowadays product development. However certain activities pose additional challenges when carried out in a distributed setting. Activities involving creativity are some of them. To overcome these challenges support is needed that ensures the functioning of creativity techniques in distributed, i.e. virtual settings. To develop such support the challenges need to be identified exactly as well as the requirements for transferring Creativity Techniques (CTs) into virtual application. Therefore, a preliminary study in a LiveLab environment was carried out. The results are compared with the requirements found in the literature. The creativity technique TRIZ-Box which represents the 40 inventive principles in TRIZ as physical objects to assist the idea generation is the CT this contribution focuses on. With respect to the requirements, the TRIZ-Box is adapted for execution in Virtual Reality (VR). The resulting prototype is then validated by three teams of two experts for design method development that solve an example problem using the VR-TRIZ-Box. Conclusions on the first prototype of the VR-TRIZ-Box are drawn through the number of ideas generated with and without the CT and the observation of the participants during the process of applying the CT. ... mehrTechnical and procedural challenges are identified that require further development iterations, however, the VRTRIZ-Box proves itself as a successful virtual pendant to the real TRIZ-Box and shows possible implementation in future metaverse applications.