Cultivation Pathways of Narrative Spatial Thinking in Short Video Set Design: A Design Thinking Framework-Based Approach

Abstract

The rise of the micro-drama industry has imposed new competency demands on set design professionals, the core of which lies in a specific design cognition—"narrative spatial thinking," the ability to translate script texts into spatial solutions. At present, interior design pedagogy still predominantly focuses on static functional space training, and the systematic cultivation of this ability remains insufficient. Drawing on the five-stage model of design thinking, this study deconstructs narrative spatial thinking into three teachable sub-competencies—text translation, emotional spatialization, and sequence organization—and develops three corresponding pedagogical tools. Through an 8-week quasi-experiment, the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group in three dimensions—narrative clarity, emotional expressiveness, and creative novelty—and exhibited more systematic and reflective design thinking characteristics. This path provides an operable and scalable practical framework for teaching narrative spatial design.