Creativity plays a significant role in competitive product ideation. With the increasing emergence of Virtual Reality (VR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, the link between such technologies and product ideation is explored in this research to assist and augment creative scenarios in the engineering field. A bibliographic analysis is performed to review relevant fields and their relationships. This is followed by a review of current challenges in group ideation and state-of-the-art technologies with the aim of addressing them in this study. This knowledge is applied to the transformation of current ideation scenarios into a virtual environment using AI. The aim is to augment designers’ creative experiences, a core value of Industry 5.0 that focuses on human-centricity, social and ecological benefits. For the first time, this research reclaims brainstorming as a challenging and inspiring activity where participants are fully engaged through a combination of AI and VR technologies. This activity is enhanced through three key areas: facilitation, stimulation, and immersion. These areas are integrated through intelligent team moderation, enhanced communication techniques, and access to multi-sensory stimuli during the collaborative creative process, therefore providing a platform for future research into Industry 5.0 and smart product development.

Empathy is a key driver for designers to unlock their user’s perspective. However, its multi-dimensional nature can be detrimental to the design process; therefore, a structured approach is vital. The current emergence and capabilities of Virtual Reality (VR) technology have inspired this research to explore how designers can achieve the optimal level of empathy required to produce innovative design solutions. A qualitative study involving semi-structured interviews with design engineers working with industry was performed to analyse current challenges in empathic design and identify how VR can address such challenges. The study highlighted that communication and resource factors were the main barriers to designer empathy. In response to this finding, this research bridges the gap between the designer and the user through the digital transformation of the designer’s profession that provides enhanced value to human-centricity, social and ecological interactions. The outcome of this study entails the creation of a specification for a novel fully immersive virtual environment: Designer Empathy in VR that augments designers’ empathic skills and empowers the designer to achieve cognitive and affective empathy towards their user from multiple perspectives. This research is a platform for a future empirical study addressing the impact of digital empathy on creating user-centred and innovative design solutions.

Empowerment is crucial for eliciting designer empathy. This research explores a distinctive integration of empathic modelling and role-play, termed Empathic Empowerment. Through a qualitative study, this research introduces a novel evaluation system, entitled the Empathic Empowerment Scale, designed to support the optimal level of designer empathy in a situated interaction drawn from habitual user experiences. The goal of this research is to empower designers to create the next generation of human-oriented solutions with enhanced inclusivity and social value, through practical experiences.

The evolution of the relationship between healthcare professionals and patients towards patient-centered care has emphasized the importance of understanding patients’ perspectives, values, and needs. This shift has transformed decision-making from a technical standpoint to a more holistic approach integrating moral influences, driven by empathy. This research explores the transformative role of empathy, facilitated by Virtual Reality (VR) technology, in healthcare practitioners’ interactions with patients. Inspired by VR's immersive capabilities, the novel specification entitled the Digital Empathic Design Voyage is presented as a foundation for operational virtual environments that empower humans to experience empathy. Through outcomes from literature and a qualitative study, this paper determines appropriate digital environment interactions relevant to a healthcare scenario. The research envisions a deeper understanding of patients, fostering human-oriented healthcare practices and solutions.

Computer-aided design (CAD) and 3D models have become the state-of-the-art tools for visual communication, moving beyond traditional 2D line-drawings. Recently, visual communication provided by CAD and 3D models has been further enhanced by contextualization, immersion, and presence induced by virtual reality (VR), allowing engineers, clients, and stakeholders to collaborate in a shared virtual space and use natural interactions to manipulate the CAD and 3D models. However, literature shows that the adoption of VR technologies is still low amongst engineering teams, mainly due to a lack of expertise in how to integrate and use VR in existing design and development workflows, in particular for design reviews, a key process during product design and development. In this paper, a qualitative user study that aims to understand the pain point of adopting VR in design reviews by engineering teams is presented. The study highlighted that the main factor contributing to low adoption is due to the difficulty in updating and producing the required design review documentation within VR. In response to this finding, a concept design of embedded documentation management system VR interface for VR design reviews was developed in the from of a paper prototype. The prototype was developed from the outputs of a design workshop with potential users, which enables users to create, update, and manage design review documentation. The findings from the qualitative user study and the concept design constitute the original contribution to knowledge for this paper.

This paper explores the dynamics between humans and collaborative robots (cobots), focusing on the crucial element of trust. Despite robots’ limitations in reflection and adaptability compared to humans, trust plays a pivotal role in determining the success of such collaborations. By employing principles of storytelling and role-play, trust mechanisms were designed in a contextual interaction between a human and a cobot to deeply understand the human perspective in the interaction on a cognitive and affective level. A qualitative workshop involving students from engineering and product design fields provides insights into human thoughts and emotions during human-robot collaborations (HRC). The outcome of this paper is a novel HRC experience map as a method for revealing the intricacies of trust dynamics, whilst serving as a foundational exploration in advancing interaction-based manufacturing processes towards human-centricity, efficiency, and effectiveness.