VIRTUAL human beings will be used in a £1m online facility aimed at expanding design and creative businesses in the North-East.

Teesside University’s Centre for Design in the Digital Economy (DLab) is to establish an online version of the planned Northern Design Centre.

The £13m Northern Design Centre in the Baltic Business Quarter, Gateshead, will offer incubator space for small design sector businesses and house Design Network North.

The network enables firms to share knowledge and exploit opportunities through the use of good design practices to grow the design industry in the region.

The DLab project will offer exactly the same facilities but in a virtual world.

Users will appear as “avatars”, virtual human figures, which can move around the virtual business park to take part in meetings and conferences, attend exhibitions, use training facilities and take advantage of more general business development activities.

Although it may sound more like a computer game, it serves a serious purpose.

Companies from anywhere in the world will be able to access the business park, its resources and facilities and take part in a diverse range of business development activities for commercial advantage.

Users will be able to speak and work together online to share knowledge and ideas, collaborate, and develop profitable supply chain or service opportunities.

It is being financed with £515,000 from the European Union’s ERDF Competitiveness Programme 2007-13, managed locally by regional development agency One North East and £565,000 from Teesside University.

The money will be used to assist 76 companies, from any sector which can demonstrate use of creativity, design and innovation in their business, to set up on the facility.

DLab director Professor Brian Wilson said: “Users will inhabit a 3D-environment populated with office buildings, exhibitions, training resources, conferencing and meeting areas.

“The creation of business premises and technical support of interactive real-time services through 3D online facilities will allow businesses to present their capabilities and resources to the market place, and attract market and investment engagement in a completely new way.”

It is hoped the online facility will remove many of the physical, service, logistics, cost or communication limits that can be barriers to growth in the outside world.

One North East design senior specialist Ben Strutt said: “It simply makes more sense to work in a 3D environment than in 2D, as this is what we are naturally used to in the physical world.

“This makes it a very exciting and sustainable business tool. The new mass participation online economy is already under way on a global stage and the North-East needs to be at the leading edge of it.

“Use of design processes, services and technologies enable critical bridges to be built between early ideas, research, development, and the market place.

“We need to ensure North- East companies have the knowledge, skill and operational presence to exploit new forms of online commerce and become competitive pioneers of a virtual-3D online business environment.

“This pilot project will provide a new channel of communication that enables businesses in the design sector to increase collaboration and knowledge transfer opportunities, develop connections with new markets, and acquire market insight for product and service innovation.”

The design industry is part of the wider commercial creative sector, which is worth about £800m to the North- East economy with the potential to create about 9,000 jobs during the next four years.