Nowadays Virtual Reality allows products to be presented to potential users, but as they cannot feel them physically, their perception of some product attributes can be distorted. Conversely, the mixture of visual and touch feelings that Tangible Virtual Reality (TVR) offers could act as a similar approach to knowing products in real settings. This is a first study to compare the evaluation of product attributes presented in a real setting and by Tangible Virtual Reality to verify the possible equivalence of both means. The Semantic Differential Method was used to evaluate product attributes by creating a semantic scale with 16 bipolar pairs. Seventy-seven people (mean age of 21.7) evaluated one product by both means in an alternate viewing order.The results revealed that the product that was chosen was rated with more positive attributes in some bipolar pairs when experienced via TVR, while it was better rated in others when experienced in a real environment. The Wilcoxon test (α=0.05) corroborated that the presentation means used to evaluate the product influenced the evaluation of 15 of 16 attributes.

This study compares the degree of creativity of forty-two conceptual designs proposed as solutions to two innovative design problems developed in face-to-face and virtual collaborative environments. The solutions obtained were evaluated by three experts applying the Moss metric, which considers the level of usefulness and the level of unusualness. The average values and the trends of the data were obtained and an analysis of the variance was also performed to determine whether the environment influences the degree of creativity. The results show that it cannot be proved that the level of creativity is influenced by working face-to-face or virtually, that is, whether Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are used or not has no effect on the final result.

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With the current technological explosion, the arrival of Web 2.0 and the growth of ICTs, designers' tools can be understood and used by novice users. With this statement in mind, and considering previous works that claim that team-working enhances creativity, the present paper reports on an experiment conducted to test whether a large group of creative people organised in a Virtual Learning Community are able to produce a Graphic Design with a satisfactory level of creativity starting from an almost complete lack of knowledge on the discipline, where a "satisfactory level of creativity" is understood as being that level which can be achieved by an individual with specific knowledge in the subject working in isolation. The results were assessed by means of an adapted questionnaire based on the CPSS taxonomy, and statistically analysed using ANOVA. The conclusions appear to reinforce the idea that virtual team-working enhances creativity, but the lack of specific competence training can be discerned by an expert eye.

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