Enhancing Design Creativity Through Embodied Platforms: An Exploratory Study Comparing Desktop, Mixed Reality, and Virtual Reality in Design Education

Design education places strong emphasis on fostering students’ creativity, and the rapid development of embodied immersive technologies presents new opportunities in this regard. This exploratory study recruits 34 university students with different levels of expertise (17 novices and 17 experienced learners). Each participant completes a 3D conceptual design task using three design platforms with varying levels of embodiment: desktop, Mixed Reality (MR), and Virtual Reality (VR). Data on self-reported sense of embodiment, design creativity, and behavioral patterns are collected and analyzed. The results suggest that the VR platform, which provides the highest level of embodiment, is associated with significantly higher overall creativity as well as six creativity dimensions: fluency, flexibility, elaboration, originality, aesthetics, and requirement fulfillment. In addition, students using the VR platform exhibit more frequent and interconnected transitions between design behaviors, suggesting more exploratory and flexible design processes. No significant interaction is observed between design platform and expertise level in the present sample, suggesting that the effects of platform embodiment are broadly similar for novice and experienced learners. Based on these findings, this study proposes action-based metaphor and contextual consistency as potential explanatory factors that may contribute to creativity enhancement in highly embodied design platforms. Practical implications are discussed from the perspectives of platform design, learner differences, and pedagogical strategies. Overall, this exploratory study provides preliminary empirical evidence for understanding how embodied design platforms may support creativity in immersive design education and offers a foundation for future research.