Immersive designer

My colleagues and I work in a field where modern technologies are used to improve the effectiveness of training material or to accompany specialists during their work. And recently, in the development process, articles, interviews, the term “immersive designer” has been increasingly used. I decided to collect some thoughts on the help of this specialization.

Definition

The term itself can be interpreted quite broadly, but in working with interactive technologies and specifically VR / AR, it means a specialist in creating immersion and interaction systems in both virtual and real environments, as well as building a connection between them.

Thanks to the development of VR / AR technologies, systems for recognizing gestures, facial expressions and voice, the tasks of UX / UI designers have gone beyond the plane, limited by the screen frame and moved into the sphere of spatial interaction and the effect of immersion in virtual reality.

A simple example is the issue of placing the system menu interface in a VR simulation. Where can it be located?

Of course, the final decision largely depends on the goals and objectives of the simulation itself, issues of balancing the speed of data access and the immersion effect. But the bottom line is that, unlike other areas where the designer initially works within the given framework (elementary set by the screen frame itself), the range of possibilities in immersive environments becomes very wide and there may not be a ready-made solution at all, it does not need to be chosen from available list of approaches, and create. This is why this area is so incredibly interesting.

Expertise

Despite the fact that certain approaches in the design of such systems were

developed

With the emergence of immersive technologies available to work, many aspects of interaction design needed to be completely rethought by game designers (and some expertise can be useful from the field of immersive theater).

And here we can single out the following set of knowledge that allows specialists to create comfortable systems of presence and control in the virtual space:

  • Knowledge in the field of technological solutions on the market
  • Understanding the peculiarities of the perception of the virtual space by the user, how he interacts with it thanks to the equipment used
  • Knowledge in the design of VR / AR interfaces and the ability to develop interaction systems for different devices (approaches to managing interactive content in space, user movement systems, communication between the user interface and the virtual environment, and so on)
  • Specificity of Narrative Design in Virtual Reality
  • Features of network interaction in virtual space, including the specifics of visualization of avatars
  • Selected knowledge in the field of creating 360 video and audio

Demand

These specialists are in demand in those areas where an important aspect of the user experience is the effect of immersion in a virtual environment or the ability to work with a digital layer in reality – games, training, marketing and sales, support of work processes, and so on.

Nowadays, more and more training programs for specialists working with immersive technologies appear in institutes and on various educational platforms. But from an employer’s perspective, knowledge in this area is usually another plus, not a necessity. Anyway, at the moment.

For example, we are in Modum labWhen we are looking for a designer or programmer, we first of all pay attention to the experience of work in classical areas, for example, the experience of a designer in designing user experience and how interested a person is in exploring new directions. And in the future we ourselves will transfer the necessary expertise.

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