Attempts at Mapping the VR Design Space

Or, how Tender Claws is creating acid tests for immersive design theorists

Hello, Aki and Dooley here. In the fifth episode of our second season, we discuss an academic paper ”The design space of dynamic interactive virtual environments” by Kristopher J. Blom and Steffi Beckhaus. The paper documents an ambitious research project from the early 2010s, where the aim was to map VR design space in terms of possible interactions and modalities.

In the podcast, we also discuss how ground-breaking work in VR, such as The Under Presents, defies being captured by formal models.

Blom and Beckhaus’ paper presents a formalistic approach, where the authors break down the various interactive and dynamic aspects of VR environments into a model. The model aims to do away with phrases such as ”with Virtual Reality, anything is possible” and give designers a structured view into what is possible. In this way, the authors also used the…