| Title |
Narrative Creativity in Nature-Inspired Learning Spaces: A Multimodal VR Study Integrating Eye-Tracking, GSR, and Perceived Restorativeness |
| Authors |
이영유(Li, Yingru) ; 정소비(Zheng, Xiaofei) ; 첸지에(Chen, Jie) ; 김나연(Kim, Nayeon) |
| DOI |
https://doi.org/10.14774/JKIID.2026.35.3.029 |
| Keywords |
Creativity; Biophilic Design; Eye-Tracking; Perceived Restoration; Galvanic Skin Response; Art and Design Studio Classroom; Virtual Reality |
| Abstract |
Conventional classrooms often offer limited support for sustained attention, restoration, and creative performance, and empirical evidence on biophilic design in learning spaces remains scarce. To address this gap, we developed three immersive virtual reality (VR) classrooms for an art and design studio (a conventional control, an ocean classroom, and a forest classroom), and tested 34 participants in a within-subject design, recording eye-tracking, galvanic skin response (GSR), perceived restoration, and creative story scores. The results showed the following.
The ocean and forest classrooms significantly increased students' overall visual attention allocation compared with the conventional classroom. At the area of interest (AOI) level, both biophilic classrooms significantly increased total fixation time (TFT) and fixation count (FC) on the ceiling and wall AOIs. For the desk AOI, apparent reductions in the forest classroom did not survive area normalization, indicating that this pattern reflected differences in AOI size. GSR showed no overall multivariate effect and no amplitude differences; only SCR frequency in the ocean classroom was marginally higher than in the conventional classroom, indicating limited, cue-specific physiological effects. The ocean and forest classrooms both yielded higher perceived restoration than the conventional classroom, and preference ratings were higher for both biophilic classrooms than for the conventional classroom. Lastly, creative story performance was higher in both biophilic classrooms than in the conventional classroom; this effect remained significant after statistically controlling for narrative length, suggesting that the biophilic advantage is not fully explained by differences in verbal output alone. These results show that biophilic cues can be evaluated as measurable design interventions. By combining VR with multimodal behavioral, physiological, and subjective measures, this study provides preliminary quantitative evidence that may inform future investigations of biophilic design strategies for art and design studio classrooms. |