Using an Immersive Virtual Reality Design Tool to Support Cognitive Action and Creativity: Educational Insights from Fashion Designers

This study explores how a virtual reality (VR) design tool can enhance designers' cognitive action and creativity in the design process. Ten fashion designers participated in cognitive protocol research and in-depth interviews. Regarding the idea generation process's cognitive action, we limited the experiment to the sketch phase early in the design process and selected a 2D digital design tool for comparison. Expert reviews were also conducted to evaluate the creativity of design outcomes. As a result, we found that the immersive VR design tool activated physical and perceptual action in design cognition and enhanced flexible cognitive action amongst different cognitive action levels compared to the 2D digital design tool. Consequently, we found that the enhanced flexibility in the cognitive process in VR reinforced divergent design thinking in design concept generation and was connected with creative design outcomes.