Elements of a truly immersive experience: comparing altered reality technologies
As a designer, having the user engaged is one of the fundamentals of good design, building experience for the user who can seamlessly dribble through it and still be engaged and immersed.
An experience that completely immerses the user into the environment is crucial, one that creates an illusionary environment around them that they perceive themselves in that environment. People always want the most immersive experience possible, especially when looking in the context of entertainment, consequent to this need it can be observed that, product companies aim to increase their screen to body ratio of their products be it a phone, television or a laptop, their main goal is to have as large a screen as possible in a given dimension and this where the trend of shirking of bezels began, with an end goal to provide an immersive experience.
Having said that, is the visual aspect of the experience all that there is? An experience much more than just what you see, and to achieve true immersion three basic elements ought to be looked that, that is.
Audio — Sound is a medium that can be used to ease people into the world of the experience and keep them there. Well-implemented audio seamlessly blends into the experience and feels like the real thing
Sight — In an immersive experience, the number stimuli received by the user from the world around them as to be reduced to a minimum or rather add to that environment to fabricate a whole new experience
Touch — to convince and concretize the experience the user needs to feel the experience. To cite an instance, if someone has ever played a video game with a controller it provides haptic feedback, when a car drifts, a constant vibration or when the ball hit the crossbar (FIFA) a sharp instant vibration. This haptic feedback helps you understand, feel and relate to the environment
A true immersive experience is one that covers all these basic elements, and this can be achieved by either virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR). The broad range of things we call virtual reality is rapidly maturing following Facebook’s acquisition of oculus. Virtual Reality places the user inside an immersive experience. Instead of viewing a screen in front of them, users are immersed and able to interact with 3D worlds. Even though VR is exceptional for gaming and content consumption, it fails to comply in safety.
“The headset produces an immersive virtual reality experience that distracts users from and completely blocks the view of their actual surroundings. Always be aware of surroundings when using the headset and remain seated at all times”
This is just one of the safety precautions given by Samsung while using VR, because of this VR restricts you to only a certain area of interactivity, a sense of freedom is lost with VR.
The tether of connection with the real world and human connection is lost with VR which in the long term can be concerning. Though VR has its benefits, it is quite deterrent -as mentioned above- in real-world use, it has almost nothing to offer other than a visual extravaganza.
On the other hand, AR performs where VR fails, it presents a seamless amalgamation of the real and the virtual world. It adds layers of elements to the user's lives in real-time. It’s not as disruptive as VR, as you can still hear and feel your real-life surroundings. VR requires specific, expensive hardware and doesn’t lend itself to communal experience. Over long periods of use VR gets either exhausting or boring because VR revolves around the “lean back” paradigm; whereas the AR paradigm is more “lean forward” — active and participatory.
Ultimately, AR’s less hermetic, lean-in characteristics are more in keeping with today’s media consumption culture. The immersive experience of AR stretches far more than just games, it helps you understand your environment with a better sense and morph or add to it in ways you like. This is what true immersion should be, whether you want to populate your yard with pink flamingos or your living room with potential furniture purchases, AR is the preferred solution. It is also the best way to annotate real-world scenes with additional data. That can be anything from additional information about a painting in a museum to service instructions for an elevator repair.
