Can AI Inspire Biophilic Design in Immersive Virtual Reality Workspaces to Enhance Well-being?

Due to the growing adoption of Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) in various contexts, understanding how virtual workspaces impact humans and how they should be designed is crucial. Exploring optimal design strategies that can enhance well-being within IVR environments becomes important. In real contexts, biophilic design offers a way to improve well-being by introducing natural elements. IVR can go beyond real-world constraints for integrating biophilic elements, but this aspect is scarcely addressed in literature. A valuable assistance to support the design of IVR workspaces could be offered by generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is becoming increasingly integrated into everyday life. The aim of this work is twofold: (i) assessing if the biophilic design of IVR workspaces can improve human well-being and (ii) investigating if AI can inspire the biophilic design properly. Thus, we conducted a user study comparing psycho-physiological and subjective metrics in three conditions. A workspace without biophilia was used as a baseline. The same was enriched with two biophilic designs: one suggested by expert designers and another inspired by AI-generated graphics, simulating a not-expert developer. The findings showed that both biophilic designs significantly improved well-being; however, AI suggestions led to a reduced sense of presence in the IVR environment.