Elements & Principles
This poster intends to introduce some elements and principles in creating an immersive media experience through six questions: What is it? What does it know? How do I interact with it? How do I relate to it? How does it collect the data? And, At what level of reality does it exist?
In the context of this poster, the use of the metaphor of "Immersion" means the experience of submersion into water applied to the representation, fiction, or simulation. Immersion can also be defined as the state of consciousness where a "visitor" or "immersion" awareness of the physical self is transformed by being surrounded by an engaging environment, often artificial, creating a perception of Presence in a non-physical world.
The term is widely used to describe partial or complete suspension of disbelief enabling action or reaction to stimuli encountered in a virtual or artistic environment. The degree to which the virtual or creative environment faithfully reproduces reality determines the degree of suspension of disbelief. The greater the rest of the doubt, the greater the degree of Presence achieved.
The following are the different types of immersions:
Tactical immersion
Tactical immersion is experienced when performing tactile operations that involve skill. Users feel "in the zone" while perfecting actions that result in success.
Narrative immersion
Narrative immersion occurs when users become invested in a story similar to what is experienced while reading a book or watching a movie.
Spatial immersion
Spatial immersion occurs when a user feels the simulated world is perceptually convincing. The user thinks they are really "there" and that a simulated world looks and feels "real."
Strategic immersion
Strategic immersion is more cerebral and is associated with a mental challenge. Chess players experience strategic immersion when choosing a correct solution among many possibilities.
Design principles:
The guiding principles presented here represent initial strategies to aid in the development of Immersive media experiences:
- Computation is a medium
- Users, not designers, manage to mean
- Users, not designers, manage coupling
- Embodied interaction participates in the world it represents
- Embodied interaction turns action into the meaning
- Embodied interaction relies on the manipulation of meaning on multiple levels
The contents shown in this poster are part of the Immersive media Seminar led by Tom MacTavish.
