Positive Technology Journal

A special issue of the journal Virtual Reality will be devoted to the use of Collaborative virtual environments to support creativity. Here is an excerpt from the journals' call for papers:

Creative processes often are collaborative in nature, with a group of people reflecting on an overall theme, jointly contributing thoughts interactively, and ultimately generating new ideas. Collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) to support this process, thus, should support the group, provide a creative atmosphere and comfortable environment, and support the seamless expression and visualization of ideas. This requires the environment to be inspiring, to enable a wide range of design options, to allow multiple and appropriate types of interaction, to provide for seamless interaction, advanced visualization technologies and simplified sharing mechanisms. Example application areas of such systems are the design and development of computer games, art, product design, fashion, digital storytelling environments, entertainment services, advertising, and architecture or urban planning. The aim of this special issue is to provide an overview of innovative and state-of-theart research on Collaborative Environments in Virtual Reality which support the creative process. Paper contributions should discuss in general how to support creativity with collaborative tools and virtual environments.

Research questions cover a wide range of topics such as how to

• allow participants with various professional backgrounds, working languages,
  and ways of expressing their ideas to collaborate with each other locally and
  over distance
• allow for quick and efficient selection of options to express and visualize
  innovative ideas, going well beyond support for 2D drawings, text and voice
• provide a non-technical, human-friendly and supportive work environment
  with the focus on creativity
• support the design of multi-dimensional interactive applications
• keep an overview on different activity lines in both the design and the use of
  multilevel, multi-dimensional applications