Extensive research has focused on the influence of culture on individuals’ performance in design, with either positive or negative effects. Moreover, studies have shown that it is possible to prime individuals’ cultural values to influence their behaviours in design. However, to the best of our knowledge, no study has explored priming culture in design, especially with digital stimuli. Therefore, we conducted a pilot study to explore the influence of priming culture by digital stimuli in design. First, we created video-based digital stimuli to prime individuals’ individualism versus collectivism (IC) cultural values. We tested the digital stimuli in an ideation exercise during a creative design course that aimed to explore and implement essential creative problem-solving and design thinking methodologies in practice for students. The results showed that the collectivism digital stimulus increased the participants’ IC value. However, in the other two conditions, the participants’ IC values also increased, which was unexpected. Therefore, we discussed the role that enjoyable group ideation plays in participants’ IC values. Furthermore, we found that their design aim changes by priming IC values. These findings can support the development of educational practices aimed at encouraging design novices in teams independently of their culture and inspire researchers to further explore the influence of priming culture in design.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest among researchers in the field of virtual reality (VR) storytelling. There is a lack of studies on using VR storytelling to prime culture-related content. The cultural aspects, particularly the tendency to avoid uncertainty, have yet to be thoroughly examined within VR. Therefore, we developed VR storytelling intending to prime individuals’ uncertainty avoidance values. An experiment was conducted to assess the efficacy of VR storytelling in priming individuals’ uncertainty avoidance values. The participants’ encounter with VR storytelling was assessed through various parameters, including but not limited to their experience of presence and engagement in the virtual environment. The study provides evidence that VR storytelling has the capacity to influence individuals’ cultural values, particularly their inclination to uncertainty avoidance. Furthermore, the feedback provided by the participants revealed that they had positive emotions, a feeling of being present, engagement, and immersion while engaging with such VR storytelling.