Design and evaluation of inventive avatars for creativity and innovation

A challenge today is to create favorable conditions for creativity while enabling geographically distant people to work together. In this context, we study the virtual and digital self representation (i.e., avatar) as a medium for stimulating creativity, in line with the Proteus effect. This paper proposes a methodology for designing, evaluating and identifying relevant avatars adapted for creativity and innovation. The avatar platform we used allows one to create avatars that we evaluated on the basis of two different methods (questionnaire and pairwise comparison). Avatars obtained on the basis of these methods were then subjected to a verification phase to ensure that the user of the avatar has the same perception as evidenced by our methodology. The results demonstrate the validity of the methodology. The prospects of using avatars for creativity and innovation are discussed particularly in light of the Proteus effect.