Immersive is also for you
Less tech, more toast
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Last week a friend called me up for a chat. He is giving a keynote at IMMERSE, a conference all about immersive design, and he wanted to know what the hell I thought immersive actually meant.
And so I had a bit of a rant.
About how the term “immersive” seems loose and squishy and like it doesn’t really mean anything. And how it’s too often used synonymously with the tech-y, futuristic, Burning-Man-adjacent, warehouse-turned-exhibit aesthetic.
But the conversation kept turning over for me in the days following. So I’ve taken that stream of consciousness and organized it in a far less chaotic way than I did for him. And here’s where I’ve gotten…
Immersive feels like it’s become quite the buzzword. As if when we collectively discovered projection mapping and Instagram museums we had invented something new.
But to me, so much of how we talk about immersive, and what’s getting viral attention, is missing the point.
For something to be truly immersive, I think it has to do at least one of these four things:
Give unexpected agency
Truly immersive experiences have an aspect of playability. They design for the participant to… yes… participate.
This is not just seeing some nice visuals on the walls. Or taking a photo in front of a larger-than-life mushroom.
It’s having the audience meaningfully play a role. Create change. Have real influence. Be an agent of a shift.
And it’s doing so with a dose of delight — breaking the rules of what’s expected. Where are folks given power over both what happens, and how we get there? And how can that challenge our underlying assumptions about how things work?
Imagine…you’re driving the submarine, and you are the one making the high-stakes choices about which caves you explore, how you navigate the tides, and the remaining oxygen levels. And you’re also 7 years old.
Engage multiple senses
Immersive experiences deal in more than just nice nice, this looks trippy. They leverage smell, taste, soundscapes, the sense that is intuition. Our time- and number-sense. Textures and mouthfeel and handfeel and brainfeel.
They create multiple pathways for our bodies to experience, understand, learn, shift, and integrate.
Imagine…a midnight venture to a cedar hot tub, tucked on a cliffside. The near-scalding water. The smell of salt and wet rock and the retreating tide. The flickering candlelight. The hand you’re holding. The unobstructed sky.
World build
Immersive experiences make us feel like we are stepping through a portal, into a fully realized world. There are different rules, not just different looks. The architecture of how this place works is more than a flimsy cardboard facade. It’s deeply considered, and carefully crafted.
This doesn’t mean it has to be a fantasy world. Or a fictional one.
It can be diving into the undersea. Or stepping into a different time or place.
But what’s important is that it’s fleshed out enough to feel real. To have the rigor to stand up on its own, outside of this tiny window, or singular storyline, you are in.
Does it feel sturdy enough to hold water, so to speak, such that you can imagine other narratives existing here, too?
Imagine…the zero gravity spaceflight simulator. The airlock door to the right which you definitely would not open. The view of earth out the main window. The flashing green light coming from the control panel. And you therefore can fathom what might happen if another astronaut floated in and tried to play ping pong with you.
Nurture presence
This sounds like a duh, but for an experience to be immersive you must…immerse.
And for that to happen, two things are required.
One: the experience must be captivating, or alluring, or enticing, or pleasurable, or involved enough for you to give it your full attention.
If it’s boring, or not interesting, or full of bad-friction, or doesn’t meet a need…we’ll check out. And no matter how built-out the experience might be, we will be off somewhere else in our heads.
Imagine… this presentation sucks and so all you’re doing is thinking about lunch. Versus being so ensconced in your novel you miss your train stop.
Two: the person experiencing the experience must be capable of being present.
Have the conditions been set for folks to be distracted, dysregulated, and divided in their attention?
Imagine…are you trying to have a nice dining experience but there’s a huge TV set at eye level over the bar so you can’t keep from looking at the bright lights rather than your dinner partner? Are your notifications going off every two minutes on your desktop, buzzing and boinking and blipping every which way?
Or are the conditions set up so that the audience can pay full attention?
Imagine…the way we silence our phones, and bury them in our bags, at the movie theater.
***
AND…
There’s also two existing narratives about what makes for immersive that I’m here to challenge.
First:
The more high tech, the more immersive
There’s this sense that the more cutting-edge, niche, futuristic, or complex the technology is, the more immersive the experience.
To which I respond with a resounding “nope”.
I’m not saying that highly technical experiences can’t be immersive. But that’s not a requirement.
And often, that ends up getting in the way. Or creates friction or an uncanny valley or a distraction. Or the designer of the experience has missed the whole part about designing for the humans and the feelings, and has instead mostly designed for the machines and this cool thing we figured out how to do.
And, some of the most immersive experiences in the world? They have no “technology” at all:
A quiet walk in the woods. Splish splashing about in the pool with the kiddos. Sitting at your counter using both hands to eat the most decadent piece of beet-labneh-slathered sourdough toast with a fried egg, flaky salt, spicy arugula, and a drizzle of basil olive oil.
Second:
That you, the creator, need to design it all
It’s often that the experiences folks first think of as the most “immersive” are the ones where the designer has determined the most variables.
VR, for example, where the creator has built the world in all directions. Made the choices. Picked what goes where.
And yet…
I still think that many of the most immersive experiences are the opposite. The ones where the audience is actually doing the most creation.
A good book, for example. The reader’s imagination is having to do a huge amount of world building. Sure, the author is crafting the architecture, and guidelines for certain moments. But still… it’s the reader’s brain that is bringing it to all life.
You don’t have to do it all for them. And in fact, I’d argue that you shouldn’t.
So instead of over-determining, how can you co-create with your audience? How can they be instrumental in making this real for themselves?
***
All of this to say, friends, that you don’t need to be a generative AI coder, or an installation artist, or have a massive build budget, to make an experience that feels immersive.
You just need to take some tender care with how you want people to feel, and engage your people’s imaginations and senses as the powerful magic-making engines that they are.
Your assignment, should you choose to play:
What are you making in the near future? A retreat? A ritual? A retirement party?
Pick one of these four to lean into, to make whatever it is a little more immersive:
Give unexpected agency
Engage multiple senses
World build
Nurture presence
And don’t forget, you don’t need fancy tech, and your audience has a great brain for co-creation.
So…tell us what worked.
AND AND — if there are other core characteristics of immersive that you believe in, do holler at me.
Yours, Olivia
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