  To allow non-designers' involvement in design projects new methods are
needed. Co-design gives the same opportunity to all the multidisciplinary
participants to co-create ideas simultaneously. Nevertheless, current co-design
processes involving such users tend to limit their contribution to the proposal
of basic design ideas only through brainstorming. The co-design approach needs
to be enhanced by a properly suited representational ecosystem supporting
active participation and by conscious use of structured verbal exchanges giving
awareness of the creative process. In this respect, we developed two social
virtual reality co-design systems, and a co-design verbal exchange methodology
to favour participants' awareness of the co-creative process. By using such
representations and verbal exchanges, participants could co-create with more
ease by benefiting from being informed of the process and from the collective
immersion, empowering their participation. This paper presents the rationale
behind this approach of using Social VR in co-design and the feedback of three
co-design workshops.
